SEOUL – 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 with them.
The three, shown with Mr Kim in photographs and TV footage in North Korean media, are of great interest to Western security and intelligence agencies since they are the top people in the secretive country’s rapidly accelerating missile program.
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.
The photographs and TV footage showed that the three are clearly Mr Kim’s favourites.
Their behaviour with him was 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.
Unlike most other officials, two of them have flown with Mr Kim in his private plane Goshawk-1, named after North Korea’s national bird, state TV had shown.
With their ruling Workers Party, military and scientific credentials, the trio were indispensable to North Korea’s rapidly developing weapons programs — 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 has defected to the South and runs a think tank in Seoul.
Kim Jong Sik and Mr Jang are not from elite families, unlike many other senior figures in North Korea’s ruling class, North Korean leadership experts said. They said Mr 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.
“Kim Jong Un is raising a new generation of people separate from his father’s key aides,” said a South Korean official with knowledge of the matter, referring to Kim Jong Il, who died in late 2011 leaving the younger Kim in charge.
