A lone assassin from Kim Jong-Un's inner circle is the most likely method by which the North Korean leader would be eliminated, according to new analysis.
Given the reign of terror presided over by Mr Kim, underlined by the purges of top officials, it was "plausible" someone high up in the regime may wish to remove him, an academic study has argued.
And while North Korea experts agreed assassination was "highly unlikely" given the tyranny of Mr Kim's rule, the research paper pointed out there had been attempts on the life of his predecessor and father, Kim Jong-Il.
The report by Sungmin Cho, a graduate student at Georgetown University, which was published in the International Journal of Korean Studies, also speculated the furious backlash by Pyongyang to the Hollywood comedy film, The Interview, was that it had "the potential to inspire assassins" inside North Korea.
The regime promised "merciless retaliation" to the release of the movie, which depicted the fictional assassination of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un, and unleashed a damaging cyberattack against Sony Pictures.
Mr Cho stresses his study "is not designed to advocate the policy of assassination" but rather "an assessment of potential future events within North Korea".
He considers four possible assassination scenarios involving Mr Kim's own citizens from a group of plotters through to a close confidante acting alone.
He suggested the most likely to succeed is what he called the Kim Jae-Gyu scenario, named after the head of the South Korean Central Intelligence Agency, who in 1979 assassinated Park Chung-hee, the president.
Mr Cho concluded: "First, I argue that the assassination of Kim Jong-un is more likely to be carried out by a lone assassin than by a group of plotters owing to the Kim family regime’s coup-proof measures.
"Second, the lone assassin is most likely to be one of the regime’s top officials, not an unknown ordinary citizen, and the assassination is most likely to occur in a non-public situation like a banquet or secret meeting."
Meanwhile, Pyongyang has said it has trained its military for an attack on the residence of South Korea's president.
A US citizen detained in North Korea has also confessed to trying to steal military secrets, it has been reported.
Kim Dong Chul, a Korean-American who was arrested last October, asked for mercy when he was paraded before the media.
He apologised for his crime, which he said was aimed at the overthrow of the Pyongyang regime.
His confession was similar to that made by another American, Otto Warmbier, who was sentenced to 15 years of hard labour earlier this month for trying to steal a propaganda banner.
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