The people closest to Kim Jong-un — supreme leader of North Korea and the world’s only nuclear-armed millennial — resemble in many ways the members of a traditional royal court. There is the chief minister and No 2 — the most powerful politician in the kingdom, gatekeeper and chief adviser to the monarch. There is the head of foreign affairs, a tough, experienced and hard-drinking diplomat. Then there is the heir, still only a child, but already a regular companion of the king as he goes about the country greeting his subjects and saluting his soldiers.
To students of history, these are familiar types; they might be figures from the court of Henry VIII. But one remarkable thing sets Kim’s intimate circle apart from the Tudors, or any of the previous ruling cabals of North Korea: all of them are female.
