Senior officials paraded solemnly before Kim Jong-il’s glass sarcophagus in Pyongyang’s Kumsusan Memorial Palace Tuesday to pay their last respects to North Korea’s Dear Leader. But their public mourning may provide a glimpse of private power struggles yet to come.
As 27-year-old Kim Jong-un, the anointed successor to his father, stood before his father’s casket, he was flanked by aging, senior North Korean leaders, top military officers and officials of the ruling Workers’ Party.
Apart from the young, inexperienced and as yet untested Mr. Kim, the lineup of North Korea’s ruling elite was notable for the age of its members, many of whom are in their 70s and 80s.
But as Kim Jong-un stepped forward to bow before his father’s flower-banked bier, there was a dark-suited man standing behind him, in a long line of uniformed generals, who stood out.
Jang Song-thaek, Mr. Kim’s 65-year-old uncle, may be the North Korean equivalent of former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping — a career technocrat, who was mysteriously purged from power in 2004 only to return 18 months later to become the second-most powerful man in North Korea.
For months, Mr. Jang has been described by many analysts as the power behind the throne in North Korea and designated as a potential regent and political mentor for the young Mr. Kim.
He may already have been playing a leadership role in some sort of collective caretaker government that has guided North Korea ever since Kim Jong-il first suffered a serious stroke in August 2008.
As the husband of the dead North Korean dictator’s younger sister, Kim Kyong-hui, and the vice-chairman of North Korea’s powerful National Defence Commission, Mr. Jang is probably the most powerful leader in the country now.
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