"il" to "Un" in a Day

It's happened. North Korea's Kim Jong-il is dead and the future of the country is, once again, in question. The "Great Successor", Kim Jong-Un is poised to lead the prison camp of a country, so what will he do?

Of course, no one could possibly predict with certainty what will happen there, but it's safe to say that North Korea will probably do something crazy to get people to pay attention to it. Wait, they just fired some short-range missiles into the sea. So there you have it. Now what's next?

Un's uncle, Jang Song Thaek, will be his consigliere and, hopefully, will guide the young prince/dictator/general into a place of stability (doubt it). Because this is a familial succession and Un is in his late 20s, there will be some palace intrigue and scary times ahead in the near term. Is a twenty-something prepared to lead a country of 24 million people with nuclear weapons? Will the military assert itself to maintain stability? Will Un just follow his father's feckless "diplomatic" policies (as was seen with the missile launch)?

Or, could there be hope that this young man, who may have been exposed to events and technologies from the outside world, will have a different view about North Korea's place? It's been reported that his father liked the finer things in life (like most dictators), so maybe Un had access to computers and international news. Maybe Un saw what has been going on in the Middle East. Maybe Un knows his way around Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube. Maybe, just maybe, his youth could be an advantage to the country. If he has the self-confidence to control the military and the party, it could be possible (but not likely) that Un could liberalize things (beginning with feeding his own people) and possibly open up channels with South Korea, Japan (??) and other Asian countries with an eye towards normalization with the West. Naive? Probably, but one can dream...