Shortly after taking power, Kim Jong Un sent a chilling message to anyone questioning his authority—by having his own uncle and second-in-command dragged out of a live party meeting on camera and executed.
Jang Song Thaek wasn’t just family; he was the second most powerful man in North Korea and the chief advisor tasked with guiding a young Kim Jong Un into supreme leadership. Instead, during a televised Workers’ Party session in Pyongyang, Kim sat stone-faced at the main stage while uniformed guards marched down the aisle and violently hauled the 67-year-old general out of his seat in front of hundreds of terrified officials. Within days, North Korea branded him "worse than a dog," executed him—reportedly using heavy anti-aircraft machine guns—and digitally erased his face from every state photograph, documentary, and history book in the country.
Was purging his own flesh and blood on live television a ruthless move to stop a military coup before it started, or the ultimate act of dictator brutality?
