Detention of Kim Jong-un's uncle Jang Song-thaek raises several questions
Why has North Korea announced his ousting so publicly? The regime may well have had no choice, since the masses are no longer cut off from outside news sources and it would be worse to let rumour run amok, perhaps turning Jang into a positive figure.
"The regime may well have had no choice, since the masses are no longer cut off from outside news sources and it would be worse to let rumour run amok, perhaps turning Jang into a positive figure," says Brian Myers, an expert on ideology and propaganda at Dongseo University in Busan. "On the other hand, ascribing a counter-revolutionary motive to someone with such close ties to the Kim dynasty itself seems to me a bad move. First, it explodes the cherished myth of complete North Korean unity. Second, it implies criticism of the late Kim Jong-il. If the Dear Leader could not see what a bad person Jang was, how are the masses to trust in the wisdom of his choice of successor?"
Andrei Lankov, of Kookmin University in Seoul, and others, believe Kim Jong-un is consolidating his power.
But others are not so sure. "In my view, we cannot even say really if Kim Jong-un was behind this or what exactly this means about Kim. It is done in his name, but it is done by the elite as a group," says John Delury, of Yonsei University, Seoul. "This tells us there have been major power struggles during what looked like a very smooth transition. We can see from North Korea's own acknowledgement it has been anything but smooth."
