Jang sung taek, the uncle and political J guardian to Kim Jong Un, North Korea's young dictator, had been in disgrace before. By some accounts, he fell out of favour with all three of the country's hereditary ruling Kims. Purged and banished to a steel mill around 1978, and quietly cast out again in 2003-04, Mr Jang twice returned to big party jobs. This time he is gone for good, executed for "such an unpardonable thrice-cursed treason" as opposing Mr Kim's succession and planning a coup. The haste with which the execution was carried out, immediately after the verdict on December 12th, suggests Mr Jang posed a real political threat. So did the rush to erase hundreds of state news reports about him, and Mr Kim's absence during the purge in his distant summer retreat.
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