A MYSTERY solved! It has long baffled North Korea’s leaders that vinalon, a wonderful textile their country makes from anthracite and limestone, does not dominate world markets—it is, indeed, used in no other country. Invented by a Korean who defected to the North in 1950, it is a triumph of juche, the official creed of self-reliance. But it has lost out to other products such as nylon. Foreigners, ever bent on doing North Korea down, claim this is because vinalon is stiff, resistant to dyes, of lower quality and more expensive.

In fact, it turns out that vinalon’s chances were wrecked by a political conspiracy at home. North Korea’s official news agency this week revealed that, “by throwing the state financial-management system into confusion” and other acts of treachery, the “Jang group” of evildoers, who have now met their comeuppance, made it impossible to develop juche vinalon as the country’s two great late leaders, Kim Il Sung and his son, Kim Jong Il, had ordered. The gang had similarly sabotaged juche fertiliser and juche iron. The group was led by Jang Sung Taek, who cloaked his wicked intentions in the most deceptive of disguises: as the uncle by marriage and mentor to North Korea’s young dictator, Kim Jong Un.

The purge of Mr Jang is extraordinary. Take his seniority. Experts quarrel about how important he truly was, and exactly when he started to fall from grace. But he is married to Kim Kyong Hui, the sister of Kim Jong Il, Kim Jong Un’s father and predecessor. The couple were both Politburo members and had the rank of generals in the army. And most observers agree that Mr Jang was central to securing the succession for Kim Jong Un, whose father elevated him above his elder brothers not long before his death in 2011. Aidan Foster-Carter, an analyst of North Korea at Leeds University, notes that, at his brother-in-law’s funeral, Mr Jang was beside the hearse, right behind the new leader.

A second surprise is the range of sins he is accused of: “such anti-party, counter-revolutionary factional acts as gnawing at the unity and cohesion of the party”; selling natural resources too cheaply; womanising; being “wined and dined at back parlours of deluxe restaurants”; taking drugs; squandering foreign currency in casinos. This hints at North Korea as it really is: a country racked by poverty and hunger, with a serious problem of methamphetamine abuse, ruled by a thoroughly corrupt, self-indulgent and despotic elite. But it is perhaps the first time that North Korea’s state media have approximated the truth. Most North Koreans must be surprised to learn that a man so close to the pinnacle of power was such a bad egg.

This leads to a third remarkable feature of the purge: the publicity surrounding it in North Korea’s own press. The story first leaked abroad, through South Korea’s spy agency, which reported that Mr Jang was in trouble and that two of his aides had been executed. Then Mr Jang started disappearing from North Korean television clips—airbrushed from where he had stood at Mr Kim’s shoulder. Soon afterwards the purge made the front pages and television news in North Korea, with scenes of the moment of his detention, at an enlarged meeting of the Politburo, where he was yanked from his seat in front of his comrades. China has more experience of this kind of theatre, from the vilification campaigns of the Cultural Revolution to the juicy trial this year of Bo Xilai, a former Politburo member. North Korea, in contrast, has nearly always dispatched its disgraced cadres into silent oblivion.

All sorts of explanations have been offered for Mr Jang’s downfall. Jang Jin-sung, a former North Korean propaganda official who defected to South Korea in 2004, thinks it unlikely that Kim Jong Un ordered his sacking. He suspects a hardline faction resentful of the uncle’s influence. The South Korean press has speculated, rather wildly, that he sought to overthrow Kim Jong Un and have him replaced by an elder brother, Kim Jong Nam.

Whatever it was that prompted the purge, its effect has been to consolidate the callow Mr Kim’s position. This is hardly good news. He has already established a record abroad of provocative belligerence, through tests of missiles and of a nuclear bomb. Some of his regime’s policies make no sense. For example, a small but fast-growing tourist industry will hardly be helped by the detention of Merrill Newman, an octogenarian American veteran of the Korean war, who was on a visit back to the country. He was released this month after making a forced confession of past crimes.

So Mr Jang, though hardly an attractive figure, may actually be missed. He had a reputation as a pragmatist. He is credited with coming up with the ghastly if lucrative policy of turning North Korean diplomats into smugglers of drugs and counterfeit money to earn hard currency. More conventionally, he is said to have been an advocate of the sort of reforms that China promotes, through the opening of more special economic zones. He is said to have had ties to Chinese officials (selling them resources too cheaply, perhaps). His departure may thus mark a decline in Chinese influence. Since Western policy in North Korea these days boils down to the hope that China will persuade its ally to ditch its nuclear programme, that is hardly good news either. Kim Jong Un now presides over a country even more isolated than when either his father or his grandfather ruled.

Mourning a tousle-haired psycho-killer

It was hard to imagine that the outside world might ever miss Kim Jong Il. He presided over devastating famine at home, countless provocations abroad and a nuclear programme banned by the United Nations. Yet in his brinkmanship and chicanery he did, unlike his son, seem to know what he was doing; indeed, he was almost predictable. As his compatriots mark the second anniversary of his death on December 17th with the usual histrionic pageantry, tinges of regret may be felt in foreign capitals as well.

Economist.com/blogs/banyan