The detention of an 85-year old American man in North Korean is playing out as that country’s leader Kim Jong-Un is brutally moving to consolidate power.  Kim’s once-powerful uncle Jang Song-Taek has been ousted from power in a late night purge, his aides put to death.

“I think the young elite had Kim get rid of Jang, meaning that he will rule without a guardian,” said Koh Yu-hwan of Dongguk University in Seoul, a leading expert on the North's leadership of this bloody generational shift.

Jang Song Taek’s close position in the Kim family tree did not protect him or his associates from the purge.  He is married to Kim’s aunt, the daughter of North Korean founder Kim Il-Sung.  Jang and Kim’s aunt Kim Kyong-Hui have not been seen in public for weeks.

The move removes Jang as vice chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission and as a department head of the ruling Workers' Party.  Some believe he took over day-to-day rule of the Hermit Kingdom at least part of the time from 2008 when Kim Jong-Il fell ill until 2011 when Kim Jong-Il died.

“I think Jang took charge of North Korean economic policy since 2012. One of the policy changes he pushed for was taking away the military’s right to international trade. That was aggressively pursued late last year and led to purging of many high-level military officials. That seems to have backfired on him,” says Park Hyung-joong, a researcher at South Korea's Korea Institute for National Unification.

Amid this chaotic situation came the detention of elderly American tourist Merrill Newman who was pulled off his flight home in October and apparently required to make a video apology to North Korea for his activities during the 1950s Korean War.

Newman is a retired finance executive from California, but six decades ago he led a group of South Korean “Kuwol” guerrillas who are still resented in the North to this day. 

“The South Korean partisans were possibly the most hated group of people in the North, except for out-and-out spies and traitors from their own side,” according to University of Chicago Korean History professor Bruce Cumings, adding that “the North Koreans are still fighting the Korean War and grasp every chance they get to remind Americans that the war has never ended.”