SEOUL -- For most of the decadelong reign of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, large portraits of his father and grandfather provided the backdrop to Workers' Party meetings in Pyongyang.
But in 2021, the late Kim Jong Il and North Korea founder Kim Il Sung were conspicuously missing from photographs of meetings provided by state media. It might be that Kim Jong Un, who was less than 30 years old when he took command following his father's death, felt somewhat overshadowed by his long-deified predecessors.