In North Korea, Kim Jong Un appears to rule supreme. There is no talk of collective leadership, competing coalitions, or personal limitations. Most of those at the political summit five years ago when his father died are gone — dead, purged or missing.
Kim has done what many of us thought impossible: take and keep control in one of the world's most dangerous political snake pits. His father spent far less time preparing the way for Kim than his grandfather had for his father. And Pyongyang was filled with party apparatchiks, military officers, and skilled technocrats who had waited more than six decades to supersede the Kim dynasty.
But the young Kim, recently believed to have turned 33, skillfully and sometimes brutally purged the various mentors and minders chosen by his father. And while elite dissatisfaction is evident from occasional high level defections, nothing suggests sufficient opposition to oust Kim or overthrow the system.