THE brother-in-law of Kim Jong-il has taken over the running of North Korea, stamping on dissent while the dictator recovers from a stroke.

A stream of reports has reached exiles about the man wielding an iron fist to keep the country under tight control as its 23m people endure a hungry winter.

He is Jang Song-thaek, a 62-year-old lifetime party functionary with pomaded hair, gold-rimmed glasses and a taste for dark suits, who was nominated on December 6 as director of the Korean Workers’ party, a title that conceals his role as head of internal security. His chief qualification for the job is his the fact that he is married to Kim’s younger sister, Kyung-hee.

His mandate is to guarantee control as the regime waves farewell to George W Bush and waits to see what Barack Obama will do about its nuclear weapons.

Accounts filtering out to exiles in the cities of northern China indicate that he is enforcing conformity with such determination that even servants of the system nickname him “the most villainous follower” of Kim.

The ruling party has issued a succession of reports and photographs to bolster its claim that Kim, the 67-year-old Dear Leader, who reportedly suffered a stroke last year, is well. But it is Jang whose day-to-day executive decisions have been reported by state media.

Party loyalists may clutch empty bellies but Jang has forbidden them to buy or sell goods in the country’s few private markets, saying that one cannot trade ideology for survival.

He has stifled commerce with China in the name of doctrinal purity, fearing the influence of cross-border traders. Regulations have been tightened to restrict travel between the two countries, supposedly close allies.

Jang appears to be obsessed by spies and sabotage. A wave of executions followed his progress through the troubled northern provinces as he sniffed out backsliding, corruption and dissent. He himself has survived at least one purge, when his supporters vanished, but returned to favour two years later, appearing alongside Kim on a trip to China in January 2006.

People in Pyongyang, the capital, whisper of an impending show trial of agents sent from the south to assassinate the Dear Leader, a claim South Korean officials dismiss as fantastic.

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