So now that this week's 'Kim Jong Un is on his death bed!' frenzy is over (my contribution to the hysteria: https://twitter.com/Robert_E_Kelly/status/1252459381188210689), I see 2 reasons why this exploded so fast:

A) Kim's health is almost certainly pretty poor. Just from looking at him, you can see that he is /1

obese. Guesses put his BMI in the mid-40s. He is also apparently a heavy smoker. He is frequently photographed smoking, and rumor is that his wife tried and failed to get him to quit. When he meet Trump and SK prez Moon in the last few years, it was noted that he often looked /2

winded. He is also rumored to have had gout which could explain the cane he has used in the past. Gout suggests heavy drinking, which would also not be a surprise given the neronian lifestyles of wild partying his father and grandfather enjoyed. His father apparently drank a /3

bottle of Hennessy a day near the end of his life and had a pancreatic stroke from the boozing in 2008. All this is to say that Kim,like the cronies and relations in the family for decades now, probably lives a pretty indulgent lifestyle which will physically catch up with him /4

eventually.

B) The succession line is unclear. When KJU's grandfather died, his son had been prepped for awhile; when KJU's father died, KJU had been prepped for at least a few years. But KJU's kids, up to 3 of them perhaps, are all too young. But NK mythology requires a /5

member of the family bloodline. That's why there's been so much focus on his KJU's sister. But as @SheenaGreitens pointed out (good thread: https://twitter.com/SheenaGreitens/status/1252433987055710209), female succession in an autocracy is super-rare, and gender attitudes in NK are pretty reactionary. Would the /6

old guard - the army & the party specifically - accept a young woman who's only just begun these last few years to build regime connections? Dicey. But then,KJU had similar problems on his ascension: he too had no serious exposure or training with party or army but nonetheless /7

came to master the tangled mosh-pit of Pyongyang's backroom politics (which is pretty impressive actually given that a lot of people thought he would get pushed aside or reduced to a figurehead). If there were to be a factional dispute, my guess it would this: party ideologues /8

or army brass would resent female elevation, and there would be some kind of bureaucratic struggle with the Kim clan over whether she would be a real Kimist monarch or a figurehead. But eliminating the Kims outright is super-risky. The Kims conveniently allow all other regime /9

actors to blame them for country's problems and atrocities. Were a junta to openly throw out the Kims, the generals would then be culpable. Also, the Kims and the bloodline mythology are what make NK distinct, make it the DPRK or 'Kim-country' as guides often called it when I /10

to North Korea. So without the Kims, the cult, the ideology, statues, and all the rest, NK is just northern Korea - poor, backward, unhappy - with no obvious reason not to unify with the wealthier compatriots to the South. The Kim Show - even though elites probably don't /11

believe the ideology themselves - keeps the whole absurd, horrific jalopy on the road. And NK elites don't want unification, because they benefit from the current division and would likely face exile or ruthless justice afterward. In short, if KJU were to die, there would /12

still be strong incentives for regime elites to keep the Kims around, at minimum in figurehead form. /13