Jang Jin-Sung, a former regime insider and Kim Jong-il's poet laureate and propagandist has reportedly claimed that Kim Jong-un doesn't control the state.
According to The Independent, Jang said that an "old boys' network" called the Organisation and Guidance Department (OGD), wields power from the shadows, adding that the outside world had been deceived by the handover of power after Kim Jong-il died.
He said that what they did not see was what happened to the apparatus of the totalitarian system that supported the rule of Kim Jong-il.
Calling Kim Jong-un a "political orphan," Jang said that after the execution of Jang Song Thaek, Kim Jong-un's uncle, he has become an orphan in terms of both family connections and politics.
Jang, who had the chance to meet Kim Jong-il, said that the leader was nothing like the saint he had imagined.
Jang reportedly witnessed unspeakable horrors in the state, of which famines and theater of public execution were the most harrowing part, making him believe that he was living in the end days of the world.
The poet, who fled the nation a decade back, still fears for his life as North Korea continues to publicly issue death threats to him, swearing to remove his existence from this universe.
