Ominous Foreboding...?

So much for the presumption of grateful appreciation to one's mentor's who step forward during times of great personal stress and sorrow to carefully guide the needy into a recuperative emotional state of equilibrium and stability. Being that guiding mentor, at the very least, was the perceived role of Kim Jong Un's uncle, Jang Song Thaek, after the death of the older Kim.

Always seen as the second most powerful figure in the current Kim-dynasty of North Korea, Mr. Jang is suddenly no more, his memory degraded by having plummeted from a figure of great respect to one reviled as "despicable human scum".

Having skilfully led Kim Jong Un through a transition period when he assumed power after the death of Kim Jong Il in December 2011, Mr. Jong embraced the responsibility of helping to guide North Korea toward economic stability with enhanced political and economic ties with China, North Korea's steadfast protector on the world scene. Now, however, North Koreans have been instructred that the 67-year-old had been designing a take-over of power for himself.

Accused of corruption, womanizing, gambling and drug-taking, Mr. Jang must have understood that his life was in direct peril. Two of his close aides had already been arrested and summarily executed. For months, Mr. Jang must have been keenly aware that he was no longer being honoured to be seen in the close presence at official events with his nephew, the all-powerful great leader whose egocentrism he had helped, along with his wife, Mr. Kim's aunt, to sharpen to perfection.

The confidently smug and smiling Kim Jong Un now has new, reliable confidantes he can depend upon. Having ruthlessly struck from power and excised from life the man who had been his guide and mentor, a relative whom he had trusted, he has delivered the message that no one is immune to the fate of expendability. Placed on a pedestal of responsibility and power alongside that the great leader one day, and the following day recognized as a mendacious conniver, and destined for death.

Little wonder that anyone Mr. Kim now appoints to high office will be scrupulously loyal.

Kim Jong-un has been shown in a series of images released by North Korean state media touring a military institute surrounded by loyal military officers, in an apparent show of his grip on power

The incendiary, explosively unexpected changes in the political climate, the high tension, the volcanic eruptions of high dudgeon and instant reprisal has the international community on edge. This is, after all, a hugely irascible, nuclear-armed state at perpetual war with the world with few exceptions, one being yet another regime, stridently religious as opposed to North Korea's fervent ideology of threatening hubris. Just as the Islamic Republic of Iran has celebrated the tractability of the West under pressure, so too has the Peoples Republic of North Korea.

What next, wonders the world, and most particularly South Korea toward which neighbour the North's truculently threatening belligerence has been a Sword of Damocles. While North Korea has taken steps to summon back home business people working out of the north-eastern Chinese cities of Shenyang and Dandong, South Korea waits to see whether Pyongyang will once again suspend operations at the Kaesong joint factory complex that employs 53,000 North Korean workers.

Meanwhile, the enhanced bilateral trade and investment program that Mr. Jang had worked to effect with China is being dismantled.

Jang Song-thaek

All North Korean officials and their staff placed in China by agreements arranged by Mr. Jang to strengthen ties between Pyongyant and Beijing, and accelerate a move toward economic advantage for North Korea will be recalled, along with workers. It seems sufficiently clear to some observers that the purge that began with two top officials aligned with Mr. Jang, embracing Mr. Jang himself, will now progress to all those perceived to have been loyal to the once-trusted Mr. Jang.

His Chinese-style economic reform has been rebuffed. Mr. Jang having been accused of "selling off precious resources of the country at cheap prices", opposing the "development of the industries of Juche iron, Juche fertilizer and Juche vinalon". The development of indigenous industries, it is charged, was held back in favouring trade with China in basic resources; one of the only income sources for North Korea.

Chinese authorities are nonplussed and more than a little uncertain about how to react. Non-interference in internal North Korean affairs, however, is the mantra. Despite that even China has been forced to attempt restraining tactics with Pyongyang at the alarm their defiant rocketry and threats, nuclear tests and belligerence have caused within the international community. A definite diplomatic cool-down between Beijing and Pyongyang has been seen to have taken place prior to the execution of Mr. Jang.

Kim Jong-un's uncle's once honoured and prestigious presence in official photographs has been expunged. From presenting as North Korea's sole ally in the Security Council and the United Nations, resentment and suspicion have emerged. Each time Mr. Kim's strident belligerence has surfaced, Beijing appears to have winced a little more. Their strategic alliance of student-mentor-states was coming asunder. China's recalibrated policy with an avuncular attitude toward a restive state has been noted.

Pyongyang was no longer receiving the cash infusions it depended upon from China. The high-ranking Communist Party which had formerly dealt with Pyongyang on policy had turned to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to deal more sternly with North Korea. A list of items China had formerly routinely delivered to North Korea now gained the hands of Chinese customs officials with instructions to prevent delivery.

President Xi Jinping welcomed a state visit to Beijing by President Park Geun-hye of South Korea, and President Xi plans to reciprocate, to visit Seoul. This unforgivable snub to North Korea, where President Xi has expressed no interest in visiting Pyongyang, nor inviting Kim Jong-un to visit Beijing has stung, and the response appears to be what the world has seen publicly revealed in the downgrading of relations and the execution of North Korea's chief envoy to China.

Reports out of South Korean intelligence sources of movements of helicopters and rockets close by the maritime border with South Korea may presage preparation for another nuclear test, and an increasingly turbulent future for the area. China's only friendly, if overly-wrought relationship with a neighbour in the geography is in deep jeopardy at the very time when China's relations with the balance of its neighbours in the South China Sea and beyond are deeply fractious.