C'mon let's be serious here. Do any of us seriously really think just because he's a despotic dictator, that will mean he can nuke or do whatever he wants and his staffs won't stop him? No matter how much of a messiah he is within his borders, he is only as powerful as the staffs who support them.
And all successful dictators(meaning those who can finish their reign) have this in common: they are sane, rational people, and they need the support of his senior staffs. Power only exists where people recognizes it, and the most important rule of this is that you make it attractive choice for people to recognize your power, while unappealing choice if one is to ignore your "legitimacy"(in the case of a dictator or power-seeker, they make sure disobedience is associated with fear, or the theme for the consequence). If they aren't, they couldn't see too many birthdays.
This also means something even more important: he can't go against this golden rule. If for these people, supporting him actually put themselves in danger, they will stop supporting him, or go against him in order to protect themselves. That said, he will not pull off something crazy that will send himself and all his staffs to death, since they will then be alarmed to do something about it or against him(because everyone looks after themselves. Heck if I'm one of his corrupted senior staffs and I know my life's in danger, I probably will disappear with my entire family one afternoon flying out of the country). THAT, is when you have your classic political instability where even the head of state is in serious jeopardy. This is when he acts in a way which he throws his game away and asks for his minions to turn against him. He loses his game by putting his values at risk("values" as in that they represent something critical to his instrument of power). I'm pretty sure all dictators know this golden rule the day they enter the political world.
To outsiders, dictators are just simply unpredictable to us, and to most people. However, unpredictable doesn't mean you're insane; just simply people can't guess their minds or figure out what they are about to do next. Dictators are especially specialized in micro-managing their social circles, and perhaps better at doing this than managing interstate relations. Being unpredictable is just him simply either steps ahead, or being extremely deceptive, manipulative, in order to stay above the game. So that said, we are getting our unknowns of him mixed with the stupid media reports and our lack of possessing the whole picture.
No matter how eccentric we envision Kim or his kind to be(including Hitler, Idi the Last King of Scotland LOL, Gaddafi, Hussein), we are the ones being stupid and taking a media image to our weird imaginations if we think they want to nuke the world next, or pull off some crazy sh!t "that no sane person will do", "get us all killed".
So him killing his uncle is probably just him doing housekeeping, and telling his folks what to and what not to. If his uncle is really something powerful, what we should look at is the steps and the events that had taken place up to this. That way, we can tell how far he had come into securing his power. My hypothesis is that if he executed his uncle without much foreplay(this probably is very unlikely to occur), and his uncle had never been known to the party as opposing to him, then Kim would have executed a poor move. On the other hand, if either his uncle had been known to be opposing him for many occasions, and there was a foreplay leading up to a trial and of the sort, then this lets everyone in his party to know what's going on and what to expect. Another question we should examine is the blood relations between him and this uncle. Is this uncle the father of his older brother? or his younger? Or just someone who's not important? And what's going to happen to the uncle's family? Either way, fear is for sure, but how he treats the family will send the ripple effects to the "community"(the Party).
Hmm writing this, I think I've got Stockholme Syndrome figured out haha...
