Look, we just can't help it. Whenever one of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's kooky progency crops up somewhere, it's a lot of fun to write about. We did it this week, for example. And why not? The fact that his sons occasionally try to sneak into Tokyo Disneyland on a fake passport or tag along on a British rock star's European tour makes for some intriguing speculation. It makes sense to assume that going to a posh Swiss boarding school (in the case of the two elder sons) could result in the odd policy change if one of them should ever come to power.

Which raises another important question - namely, why do any of us assume that Kim has to be succeeded by one of his sons? Simple - because the present Kim took over from his own dad, Kim Il-Sung, in line with the traditional Confucian thinking that often seems to give us a better handle on what's happening in the North than interpretive frameworks based on, say, the Marxist-Leninist thought that allegedly still serves as a mainstay of Northern ideology.

This week, though, we've received yet another interesting hint that, by focusing on Kim's sons, we could be missing a more important piece of the picture. Yesterday, on Nov. 21, the South Korean news agency Yonhap revealed that Kim Jong-Il's brother-in-law, a fellow by the name of Jang Song Taek, had been appointed to a prominent job in Pyongyang. So why is this significant? For three reasons. First, Jang is also a relative; he's the husband of the Dear Leader's younger sister. Second, he seems to be a player in his own right - someone powerful enough that he had to be sent into internal exile for a while in 2004, allegedly for involvement in a corruption case. (Some analaysts say it was actually because he was criticizing Kim's economic policy.) But he managed to stage a comeback two years ago, and now he's back at the pinnacle of North Korea's power elite. Third, just take a look at the job he's been given. It puts him in charge of the country's internal security apparatus, including prosecutors and the courts. (It may be worth pointing out that, in totalitarian states, the courts are basically just another arm of the policemen, rather than a check on them.)

In a state like North Korea, that's tanamount to making him the most powerful man around after Kim himself. None of the Kim Juniors, incidentally, has ever gotten close to a post of comparable power. The Yonhap report suggested that all this indicates that Kim is preparing for the social upheaval that could result if North Korea really does open up to the world after giving up its nuclear weapons - something that, lately, it has shown increasing willingness to do. But it could also mean something less exalted - that the real line of succession within the Kim Family Regime might not be running vertically but sideways. It may not be Eric Clapton, in short, but it's still pretty intriguing.