North Korea promotes Kim Jong Un to military's top rank North Korea says its leader Kim Jong Un has been promoted to marshal, the military's highest rank. North Korean state media made the announcement Wednesday in a special bulletin. The move follows several days of reshuffling at the highest levels of North Korea's most powerful institution: its million-man military. The changes are widely seen by outside observers as an attempt by the new leader to put his stamp on the government he inherited seven months ago when his father Kim Jong Il died.