North Korea, ten years ago the death of Kim Jong-il, father of the dynasty that rules with a hard fist

BEIJING – Too young, too weak, too inexperienced, they said. It was 2009 and the 25-year-old Kim Jong-un who until then had lived in the shadow of the regime, in cotton wool, studying in Switzerland and traveling freely around Europe, was introduced, fully dressed in a black suit to the Mao, to the regime’s elite and to the world as Father Kim Jong-il’s designated successor.