This picture taken by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on January 1, 2012 shows new North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (front row-C) posing for photos with soldiers of the Seoul Ryu Kyong Su 105 Guards Tank Division of the Korean People's Army honored with the title of the O Jung Hup-led Seventh Regiment at an undisclosed place in North Korea.
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For much of the next decade, Kim Jong Un's life is even more of a blank, other than the fact that he attended the Kim Il Sung Military Academy in Pyongyang (senior-thesis topic: guidance systems for artillery). When Kim Jong Il suffered a stroke in 2008, few students of North Korea identified Kim Jong Un as a potential successor. By then, older brother Kim Jong Chul was most often cited as the likely heir, given that Kim Jong Nam, the eldest, had embarrassed himself in Tokyo seven years earlier: he and his family were detained for trying to get into Japan on fake passports, supposedly to visit Tokyo Disneyland. Since then, Kim Jong Nam has been under the "protection" of the Chinese leadership, Pyongyang's chief patron, dividing his time between Beijing and the casinos of Macau.
The stroke that Kim Jong Il suffered concentrated the Dear Leader's mind. A successor had to be named: someone from the family had to become the high priest of "Kim Il Sung--ism," as Chun Young-woo, senior presidential secretary for foreign affairs and security in Seoul, calls the "theocracy" of North Korea. But his father viewed Kim Jong Chul as too reticent. In one of his books about North Korea, Fujimoto quotes the Dear Leader as saying that Kim Jong Chul "resembles a girl"--hardly an asset in male-dominated North Korea.
That left only one choice. As it happened, as he moved into his late 20s, Kim Jong Un developed a striking resemblance to his grandfather Kim Il Sung. Clearly not playing as much full-court hoops as he did when he was younger, Kim Jong Un now had the same fleshy face the Great Leader had. In a society mesmerized by personality cults, "that meant a lot," says North Korean defector Lee Sung Bak, who was a government bureaucrat. On Sept. 27, 2010, Kim Jong Un at 27 was named a four-star general in the Korean People's Army and appointed vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, making him second in command of the country's most powerful institution.
With his father's wishes made plain, there was never any doubt that Kim Jong Un's ascension would be smooth. He is said to be close to Jang Sung Thaek, an influential figure married to Kim Jong Il's younger sister, Kim Kyong Hui. They are widely believed to be acting as regent figures who will help Kim Jong Un carry out those dynastic policies--doing what Kim Jong Il had planned in the next few years. By the standards of North Korea, Jang is a fairly well-known quantity. He has traveled to China frequently and has also--unusually for top North Koreans--been to Seoul: in 2002 he led a delegation from Pyongyang to bolster economic ties between the North and South. South Korean officials who have met him view him as a safe pair of hands and, given his closeness to Kim Jong Il, the logical choice to be watching over Kim's son. This, at least, is the conventional view of the succession that has taken place.
The Once and Future Kim