Since Kim Jong-un succeeded his father, Kim Jong-il, in 2011, the 31-year-old has been trying to make his mark as Supreme Leader of North Korea. However, a recent interview with a North Korean defector from Kim Jong-il's inner circle indicates that Kim Jong-un is nothing more than a symbolic head, and that the real power belongs to a mysterious organization called the Organization and Guidance Department (OGD). Even weirder? Its director was none other than Jang Sung-taek, the uncle whom Kim Jong-un executed in December. The execution has, apparently, cut all familial ties between the organization and the country's supreme leader.

In the interview, North Korean defector Jang Jin-sung explains that the OGD is like "an old boys' network" made up of Kim Jong-il's university friends. Kim Jong-il rose up the ranks with the men who run the organization, and these very men, most of which the world has never seen, are still running the show.

"When Kim Jung-il died and Kim Jong-un succeeded him, people saw the transfer of power from father to son," Jang Jin-sung told CNN. "What they did not see also was what happened to the apparatus of the totalitarian system that supported the rule of Kim Jung-il."

That apparatus is essentially the OGD, a body of the government that Kim Jong-un may not have close ties with the way his father did. And now that his uncle is out of the picture, there is nothing that ties him to the institution. Jang Jin-sung assesses that the current situation means that Kim Jong-un has no real power as Supreme Leader of North Korea.

"Kim Jung Il had the OGD as his old boys' network," Jang said. "Kim Jong-un may have friends in his Swiss school, but he has no one inside North Korea."

So who are the OGD and what do they do?