North Korean leader stamps authority on army When Kim Jong-eun attended a concert last week featuring girl groups and a host of Disney characters, state media said the young North Korean leader had a "grandiose plan to bring about a dramatic turn in the field of literature and arts." This week Mr Kim turned to military matters, ousting the powerful head of the army and promoting himself to the pre-eminent military rank of Marshal. Analysts say he is stamping his mark on the country - and particularly on the 1.2m-strong military - seven months after he assumed power on the death of his father, Kim Jong-il. The new leader appears to be reducing the power of a group of elderly generals who rose to power under his father, and to reassert the subordination of the military to Korean Workers" party structures. Philip Park, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies, says the moves to assert authority may not be in keeping with his late father's wishes. Ri Yong-ho, whose dismissal as army chief of staff was announced on Monday, had been appointed to that position in 2010 by Kim Jong-il who expected Mr Ri to act as a mentor to his son, according to analysts, who have discounted the official claim that Mr Ri was ill. "Kim Jong-il's plan was to move to more collective leadership because he knew that the monolithic leadership model would not be sustainable," Mr Park says. He had about 30 years of training to be the leader of North Korea, but he only started preparing his son after he hit health problems in 2008. Kim Jong-eun doesn't have any experience - if he tries to rule like his father, it could be a problem. In April, overall control of the armed forces was given to Choi Ryong-hae, the official in charge of the general political bureau, which ensures ideological conformity in the military. While Mr Choi was given the rank of general in 2010 at the same time as Kim Jong-eun, unlike Mr Ri he is not a career military officer. Several South Korean analysts have suggested that Mr Ri may have lost a power struggle with Mr Choi, in which Mr Kim sided with the party official. Baek Seung-joo, an analyst at the Korea Institute for Defence Analysis, said that while North Korea's heavily militarised state has usually been under the official control of the Korean Workers" party, Kim Jong-eun's stance appears to be "practically different" from his father and his "military first" principles. But few analysts suggest that the new leader, believed to be about 29 years old, will implement a more conciliatory foreign policy than his father's. After a tentative rapprochement with its southern neighbour during the early part of the last decade, North Korea turned hawkish in Kim Jong-il's final years, sinking a South Korean warship in 2010, shelling one of its islands and pressing forward with a nuclear weapons programme. Despite Mr Kim"'s Swiss schooling - and the appreciation he showed last week for US cultural icons including Mickey Mouse - he has indicated that North Korea will continue to defy the west under his rule. In April, Pyongyang carried out what experts say was an abortive ballistic missile test, and subsequently vowed to "expand and bolster" its nuclear programme "as long as this hostile [US] policy goes on." Daniel Pinkston, an analyst for the International Crisis Group, says that Mr Kim is also developing his own "personality cult" in line with that which surrounded his father and grandfather, Kim Il-sung. The new leader has broken with his father's practice by speaking at public events, and has recently allowed himself to be photographed several times alongside a glamorous young woman, prompting speculation about a new first lady. Meanwhile, he sought to demonstrate his focus on the military with a personal "message of thanks" to troops who had worked on construction projects, issued on Monday alongside the news of Mr Ri's dismissal.