North Korea’s ‘dear leader’ Kim Jong-il dies

Kim Jong-il, the venerated “dear leader” of reclusive North Korea, has died aged 69, the country’s state media said on Monday.

“It is the biggest loss for the party, and it is our people and nation’s biggest sadness,” a weeping black-clad woman television presenter announced.

Kim, who reportedly suffered from heart disease and diabetes, died as a result of a heart attack on Saturday, which the official KCNA news agency attributed to physical and mental overwork.

The leader of the reclusive – and nuclear armed – “hermit kingdom” is thought to have suffered a stroke in 2008, and had since been preparing his third son, Kim Jung-un, to take over leadership of the Stalinist state.

Little is known as to how the succession will be played out, or even the exact age of Swiss-educated Kim Jong-un. Kim Jong-il succeeded his father Kim Il-sung after a three-year transition period, following his death in 1994.

Kim’s eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, 38, is understood to have been ruled out for the succession after he was caught attempting to travel to Japan using a fake passport in 2001. He was reportedly trying to visit Disney’s Tokyo resort.

KCNA on Monday told the country, workers and soldiers to stand behind Kim Jong-un and “faithfully revere” his leadership.

But little is known as to how much power Kim Jong-un, believed to be in his late 20s, actually commands and what the fate of the country, effectively sealed off from the rest of the world, will be.

“Very few of the many commentators who will speak about North Korea in the coming days have spent any real length of time in the country,” said FRANCE 24 International Affairs Correspondent Douglas Herbert.

“All speculation about what might happen next will be just that – educated guesswork.”

Personality cult

Kim Jong-un’s succession would make him the third leader of a dynasty that emerged from the ashes of the Second World War and was forged in the three-year Korean War.

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That war has never officially ended despite a ceasefire agreement reached in 1954, and the peninsula is divided by a demilitarised zone that remains one of the most fortified regions of the world.

Kim Il-sung, who had fought the Japanese during the Second World War, turned North Korea into a Stalin-inspired Communist state, founded on a personality cult that pursued during his son's rule.

Their portraits hang in every building and the elder Kim has remained “the eternal president” even after his death.

According to North Korean legend, Kim Jong-il was born in 1942 on Mount Paektu, one of Korea’s most cherished landmarks, and his birth was heralded by a pair of rainbows and the birth of a new star. According to Soviet records, he was born in Siberia in 1941.

In 1973 Kim was elected to the political bureau of the Workers' Party's central committee, formally becoming North Korea's future leader.

Nuclear capability

Following his father’s death, the younger Kim was confirmed general secretary of the Workers' party in 1997 and the “dear leader” of the country.

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Kim continued his father’s policy of prioritising the military (the world’s fifth-biggest) despite a famine which affected millions of his countrymen.

Kim also built up his country’s nuclear capability, conducting a first successful underground explosion in 2006, followed by another in 2009.

In 2002, US President George Bush branded North Korea part of an “axis of evil” with Iran and Iraq, calling Kim a “tyrant” more interested in building nuclear weapons and maintaining power through a network of “huge concentration camps” than feeding his starving people.

Lavish lifestyle

While his people suffered in their isolation and diplomatic relations with the rest of the world remained minimal, Kim cultivated his own interests, including foreign films, cars and basketball.

Kim also enjoyed a sometimes lavish personal lifestyle, as detailed by Konstantin Pulikovsky, a former Russian presidential envoy who wrote the book “Orient Express” about a trip the North Korean leader made in his personal train to Moscow in 2001 (Kim had a long-reported fear of flying).

Pulikovsky said the private train was stocked with crates of French wine and that live lobsters were delivered to stations ahead of the train.

A Japanese sushi chef who claimed to have cooked for Kim for a decade said the leader had a 10,000-bottle wine cellar, ate shark fin soup on a weekly basis and sometimes indulged in marathon all-night banquets, the longest lasting four days.

Cut off

Repeated attempts to negotiate disarmament with Kim Jong-il’s regime failed, and it remains to be seen whether his death will open a new chapter in North Korea’s relationship with the rest of the world.

Biographer Michael Breen, author of “Kim Jong-il: North Korea's Dear Leader”, told FRANCE 24 on Monday that it was impossible to say what would happen next, but remained pessimistic that the isolated country would throw open its borders any time soon.

“Nobody knows for sure what’s happening in North Korea right now,” he said. “But the country’s elite will recognise that it’s in their interest to see a stable transition of power.

“They also know that if they start opening the country up, that is going to bring down huge problems for them.

“Remember that this is a country where most people don’t even know that men have walked on the moon. They were never told because it was the Americans.”