Laughing men surrounding Kim Jong-un in photos are serious technocrats who have vastly improved the North’s arsenal.
After successful missile launches, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un often exchanges smiles and hugs with the same three men and shares a celebratory smoke.
The three, shown with Kim in photographs and TV footage in North Korean media, are of great interest to Western intelligence agencies since they are the top people in the secretive country’s rapidly accelerating missile programme.
They include Ri Pyong-chol, a former top air force general, Kim Jong-sik, a veteran rocket scientist, and Jang Chang-ha, the head of a weapons development and procurement centre.
Photographs and TV footage show the three are clearly Kim’s favourites. Their behavior with him is sharply at variance with the obsequiousness of other senior aides, most of whom bow and hold their hands over their mouths when speaking to the young leader.
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Unlike most other officials, two of them have flown with Kim in his private plane Goshawk-1, named after North Korea’s national bird, state TV has shown.
With their ruling Workers Party, military and scientific credentials, the trio is indispensable to North Korea’s rapidly developing weapons programmes – the isolated nation has conducted two nuclear tests and dozens of missile launches since the beginning of last year, all in violation of UN resolutions.
“Rather than going through bureaucrats, Kim Jong-un is keeping these technocrats right by his side, so that he can contact them directly and urge them to move fast. It reflects his urgency about missile development, ” said An Chan-il, a former North Korean military officer who defected to the South and runs a think-tank in Seoul.
Kim Jong-sik and Jang are not from elite families, unlike many other senior figures in North Korea’s ruling class, North Korean leadership experts say. They said Ri, the former air force commander, has been to one of the better-regarded schools in North Korea, but he and the other two were hand-picked by Kim Jong-un.
