Kim Jong Un’s uncle ‘very likely’ removed from power

Li Xin/AP - August 2012 photo from China's Xinhua News Agency, Jang Song Thaek, North Korea's vice chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission, attends a meeting on developing economic zones in North Korea.

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By Chico Harlan, Updated: Tuesday, December 3, 1:15 PM E-mail the writer

TOKYO — The powerful uncle of North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un has been “very likely” removed from all his positions, two South Korean lawmakers said Tuesday, in the first suggestion of major upheaval since Kim’s ascension two years ago.
The dismissal of Jang Song Thaek could not be independently confirmed, and North Korea’s state-run media did not indicate that any changes had taken place among its top leadership.

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The South’s National Intelligence Service briefed a committee of lawmakers Tuesday about its assessment, telling them that two of Jang’s aides had also been publicly executed, according to a pair of lawmakers who attended the briefing.
Jang has served as a key regent for Kim and holds one of the four vice chairmen positions on the National Defense Commission, the North’s highest decision-making body.
But North Korea’s state-run media, which carefully record the public appearances of top officials, have not reported on Jang in nearly a month.
Jang has not been seen with Kim since Oct. 10, when both attended a musical performance commemorating the ruling Workers’ Party. In 2011 and 2012, Jang appeared in public alongside Kim several times a week, a significant marker in a secretive country where power is measured by proximity to the leader, experts say.
If Jang has indeed been removed, it would mark the boldest shake-up of top leadership under Kim, who took power after his father, Kim Jong Il, died of a reported heart attack in December 2011. Under the young third-generation leader, the North has made wholesale changes in its military and bureaucracy, but Kim’s inner circle has largely remained intact — though with a few additions.
Jang’s dismissal suggests that “Kim Jong Un’s grab on power is strong, and the competition to be loyal to him is becoming fiercer,” said Cheong Seong-chang, a North Korea researcher at Seoul’s Sejong Institute.
Kim holds nearly every top title in North Korea’s party and military, redundant reminders of his control. There have been no outward signs of instability in Pyongyang under Kim, although the North continues to struggle under its archaic state-run economy. Dissent is categorically banned in the North, and those who criticize the top leadership — or the state doctrine — are sent to one of the North’s gulags or reeducation camps.