Kim Jong-un Has Potentially Been Deposed in North Korea

In all the regimes in the world, North Korea is among the worst, if not the worst. Their history and current practice of concentration camps for people believed to be against the regime, and the next two generations of those families, are so bad that even the UN Human Rights Council condemned them.  

Reportedly lost control of country, weight.

This is a country that has been ruled with an iron fist by the Kim family, first by Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, the leader of the post-World War II revolution, then by his father, Kim Jong-il, and now by the younger Kim, once his jump-suited father died a couple of years ago.  It is a country where government officials were killed for not grieving the death of Kim Jong-il with enough fervor in public. 

So, it was very curious when a government news source explained that Un had not been present at a legislative session last week because he was so fat that he had broken both ankles.  That would be pretty harsh for junior high kids making fun of each other.  Kim Jong-un is portly.  He’s not, at least recently, so morbidly obese that his ankles would give out.  He’d just been called a lard-ass by North Korean state media.  Not South Korean state media, and not by a dissident group, but by his own country’s media, asreported in the Guardian, UK. The Guardian is not the Wall Street Journal, but it’s not a gossip rag, either. This was bizarre.  Either someone (a lot of people) had a death wish, or it was a signal that Kim was not in charge.

So, it came with not so much surprise late last week when the Week, UK, reported that Pyongyang (the capital) as reported to be on lockdown, and that Kim was not running the country.  It was reported in The Week, citing Vice News (which is shockingly reputable in reporting on rogue nations), that the Organization and Guidance Department of the North Korean Communist Party is running the country and that Kim had been deposed.  It was reported that the military was complicit in the change.  Which makes it a coup. 

What is surprising is that Kim not showing up to a legislative session, being called a monumental lard-ass by his own news media, and speculation that there was a coup in North Korea (a nuclear armed country next door to China and across a narrow straight from Japan – not to mention having a border within walking distance of Soeul, South Korea, has not been reported widely in the major western media.  If true, this is a monumental event. 

There is the ebola outbreak in west Africa, which has apparently moved to Dallas. And there are two college football teams from Mississippi that beat AP top-10 teams on the same day, and are likely to be ranked in the top 10 for the first time in history.  But, seriously, this is a nuclear-armed North Korea in a potential coup, without anyone knowing who is running the place or its nuclear weapons.  That is scarier on the world stage than ebola in Dallas. However, there are obviously a few potentials also at work here.  One is that Kim doesn’t feel well and that someone was misquoted. There could be a powerplay going on now that he wins.  If there is a power play and he loses, there is the potential for either chaos and the potential that things get better for the North Korean people after some time, which would be great news.  Particularly if China or someone else took over their nuclear weapons.