It looks like Chang may not in fact be the second most powerful man in Pyongyang after all:

Kim Jong Il's regime recently released a poster, right, of "head shots" of top officials of the National Defense Commission. General O Kuk-ryol is pictured on the top right.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has begun shifting power away from the communist party apparatus and strengthened the authority of his country’s military, veteran watchers of the Stalinist regime have told FOX News. (…..)

Kim’s newfound emphasis on the military emerged in a series of recent personnel and organizational shuffles that give rare insight into his thinking about the people and institutions surrounding him, and into his possible plans for succession.   (…..)

Among the most significant of the recent changes is an increase in power and numbers of personnel in the National Defense Commission (NDC), the nation’s top military organ.

For example, oversight of the Operations Department, which employs an estimated 2,000 espionage agents, has been transferred from the Workers Party to the NDC. This move was made in tandem with Kim’s elevation of General O Kuk Ryol, the director of the Operations Department and a longtime intimate of Kim’s, to vice chairman of the NDC. As well, the NDC has taken over the Pyongyang No. 3 building, the headquarters of the party’s research and external liaison departments. The research department collects intelligence on South Korea and other nations, while the external liaison department is responsible for training and dispatching agents.

What do these changes mean? As the Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo put it, General O “has in effect emerged as the No. 2 man in charge of North Korea’s supreme power next to Kim Jong Il.”

The assessment of Korea’s Joongang Ilbo daily is that NDC’s “power has been expanded to become the de facto general administration.”  [Fox News]

You can see a who’s who of North Korea’s military high command here.

The promotion of General O would tend to clash with the view that Kim Jong-il’s brother-in-law and long time confidant Chang Sung-taek is the person that is Kim Jong-il’s right hand man.  The recent promotion of General O may have been necessary to ensure the continued loyalty of the military after the promotion of Chang.

No matter who is ultimately in charge wants Kim Jong-il kicks the bucket they are going to have to at least use his son Kim Jong-un to be the figure head leader of the country to maintain the cult of personality that has been fed to the North Korean people for so long.