Those in the inner circle in Pyongyang must have been unnerved once again with the recent news of the sudden fall of Defense Minister Hyon Yong Chol. As he reportedly went before a firing squad, Hyon could have reflected upon Cardinal Woolsey’s alleged warning to future Lord Privy Seal Thomas Cromwell, who later went to the scaffold for beheading on London’s Tower Hill: “Cromwell, I charge thee, fling away ambition: by that sin fell the angels.”

“Here today, gone tomorrow” has become just as much a part of court life under Kim Jong Un as it was during the Tudor