North Korea
Kim Jong-un of the Kim dynasty is the current Supreme Leader or "Suryeong" of North Korea. He heads all major governing structures: he is Chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea, Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of North Korea, and Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army. His grandfather Kim Il-sung, the founder and leader of North Korea until his death in 1994, is the country's "Eternal President", while his father Kim Jong-il who succeeded Kim Il-sung as leader was announced "Eternal General Secretary" after his death in 2011.
Jang Song-thaek
Analysts of North Korean politics agreed that Jang's execution was the most significant since purges carried out in the 1950s by Kim Il-Sung, Kim Jong-un's grandfather and North Korea's founder; since 1960, purged top officials have not usually been killed, and the denunciations of purged figures have not typically been so extreme and public. Professor Charles K. Armstrong, an expert on North Korea at Columbia University, stated that "although high-ranking leaders, including members of the Kim family, have been deposed before, we haven't seen anything this public or dramatic since Kim Jong-un's grandfather Kim Il-sung purged his last major rivals in the late 1950s. This seems to indicate the divisions within the Kim regime were more serious than previously thought." Former U.S. National Security Council director for Asian affairs Victor Cha said that the purge and execution of Jang "tells you that everything's not normal ... When you take out Jang, you're not taking out just one person – you're taking out scores if not hundreds of other people in the system. It's got to have some ripple effect."