*Well, we don’t really know if he is dead. Various theories are doing the rounds at the moment

The strange thing about the Kim clan is that according to a legend, they are all descendants of Princess Suriratna, who travelled from a distant kingdom to marry the progenitor of the tribe. If you believe the legend, she came from Ayodhya. Yes, that very same Ayodhya that we know of. Of course, this does not explain anything about the Kim dynasty of North Korea, which ruled like kings in that isolated yet nuclear-capable rogue nation. The founder of the dynasty, Kim Il-Sung, apparently descended from heaven at Mount Paektu, a “holy mountain” near the Korean-Chinese border. The creation myth of the clan obviously borrows from religious texts because the one mistake that most people make is considering North Korea to be a communist State. It may be the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea, but in reality the best term to describe North Korea’s governance system is to call it a “theocratic monarchy” where the word of Kim is the law.

That brings us to the latest Kim in the chain, the grandson of the founder, Kim Jong-un and the younger son of Kim Jong-Il. While there is little news about Kim Jong-un of late, with sources in Seoul and Washington contradicting each other and a studied silence from Beijing, one can assume that things are not exactly hunky-dory in Pyongyang. We do not know whether the North Korean leader is dead or not but we must assume he has been incapacitated to some degree. But why are we getting so edgy about his whereabouts? Of course, because he is the leader of a tiny country but boasts of an active and advanced nuclear weapons programme. This brings us to the question, who next for the Kim dynasty? The smart money is on Kim Yo-Jong, Kim Jong-un’s younger sister. We already know that male primogeniture is not the way the clan operates as Kim Jong-un  removed his elder (half) brother Kim Jong-Nam through one of the most bizarre assassinations in history at the Kuala Lumpur airport. But then there is “the uncle,” Kim Pyong-Il, who was brought back to Pyongyang last year after being sidelined for almost a decade as Ambassador to various nations. But any intelligence official, who knows what is going on in North Korea, is possibly just as clueless as you or me. The fact is that we have no idea of what will happen next and if Kim Jong-un is really dead or he is just undead. Sorry for the pun but we are still watching events to see who is next to sit on the Kim throne.