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2008-09-10 | Kim Jong-Il, a master of the art of survival
Kim Jong-Il, a master of the art of survival
North Korea celebrates 60th anniversary - 08 Sep 08
A handout Korean Central News Agency photo released in January 2008 shows an undated picture of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (C) inspecting the construction site at Ryesonggang. Kim Jong-Il's life is steeped in outlandish tales of cognac-fuelled playboy orgies, but North Korea's "Dear Leader" is one of the great survivors in international power politics. (AFP/KNCA/KNS/File)
The 66-year-old Kim, who conspicuously failed to attend a major military parade in Pyongyang on Tuesday and US intelligence says may have suffered a stroke, has seen off countless presidents in the rival United States and South Korea.
There have been no reported challenges to the dauphin in the world's first communist dynastic handover.
While President George W. Bush lumped North Korea into his notorious "axis of evil" with Iraq and Iran and joked about its "pygmy" leader, Kim said nothing in public, leaving it to anonymous spokesmen to condemn the "moral leprosy" of the United States.
A nuclear-backed army of 10 million soldiers guards North Korea and its absolute leader. Another army outside its frontiers feverishly analyses every report of a possible utterance by the head of the insular state.
Kim assumed control of North Korea in 1997, waiting three years after the death of his father Kim Il-Sung, founder and "Great Leader" of the Stalinist state.
Like Kim senior, an intense cult of personality grew up around Kim Jong-Il, using propaganda, prison camps and the giant army to win God-like devotion from the North Korean people.
According to the North's media, rainbows appeared over the sacred Mount Paekdu where he was said to have been born and he hit 11 holes-in-one in a single round of golf.
South Korean experts say he was born on February 16, 1942 in a Russian guerrilla camp while his father fought Japanese forces who had colonised the Korean peninsula.
After graduating in 1964, Kim climbed steadily through ranks of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea.
Brutal and quirky sides of his nature come through in stories about Kim.
He reportedly planned attacks on South Korean jetliners in 1983 and 1987.
Kim himself never takes a plane, though, preferring specially armoured trains to take him on rare foreign trips to Beijing and Moscow in recent years.
Photos of Kim and his father glare down from the walls of every room of spartan North Korean homes. Pyongyang underground commuters can be arrested for sitting on a newspaper with a picture of one of the Kims on the front page -- which they have nearly every day.
The foreign media has concentrated on pictures of Kim with his bouffant hairstyle and platform heels, sinking back fine wine in his rare meetings with foreign leaders.
Kim was the scheming leader who ordered the kidnapping of a South Korean film director Shin Sang-Ok and his wife to help make movies in the North.
During the 1990s, his own country was hit by a famine that left hundreds of thousands, and possibly millions, dead. South Korean newspapers regaled readers with unsourced tales of Kim's wild parties with prostitutes.
Yet many analysts say the outsiders' portrait of Kim is flawed. Many experts say he is a tough political realist who kept the powerful North Korean army on his side while defying the the US superpower.
Madeleine Albright went to Pyongyang and met Kim in one of her final duties as US secretary of state in 1999.
"I found him very much on top of his brief," she said of the encounter, though she noted that some of his grandiose comments about the future of the North Korean economy illogical.
"The myth in the outside world is of this totally weird playboy. The real man is politically very shrewd," according to Michael Breen, author of a biography of Kim Jong-Il.
"He has that North Korean skill of playing a weak hand well," Breen said in a 2006 interview with AFP. "This is not a crazy or deluded man."
Kim Jong Il: a familiar face but a mystery to most
In this Oct. 28, 2005 file photo released by China's Xinhua News Agnecy, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, shakes hands with Chinese President Hu Jintao, unseen, before their talks in Pyongyang, North Korea. There was no sign of Kim Jong Il at a closely watched parade in Pyongyang Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2008, marking the 60th anniversary of North Korea's founding, as a U.S. intelligence report said he may have suffered a stroke.
(AP Photo/Xinhua, Yao Dawei, File)
By JAE-SOON CHANG, Associated Press Writer Jae-soon Chang, Associated Press Writer – 21 mins ago
SEOUL, South Korea – Unpredictable, eloquent, a film buff and a gourmand. North Korea's Kim Jong Il is infamous for ruling his impoverished country with a "military first" policy since the death of his father, but little is known about his daily life.
There was no sign of Kim at a parade Tuesday marking the 60th anniversary of North Korea's founding, and Western officials say the 66-year-old leader — who has not appeared publicly for a month — may be gravely ill.
Abroad, many consider the pudgy, bouffant-haired Kim a ruthless dictator who seeks atomic weapons while starving his people. But at home, the state-run media hails the "Dear Leader" as a prodigious general, an ace film director and the "Lodestar of the 21st Century."
Kim's portrait is found hanging beside his father's in North Korean households and buildings, and his writings and philosophy, mainly praise for his father's greatness and calls for the defense of socialism, are reported and broadcast daily.
Biographical insight on Kim is extremely sketchy. He rarely appears in public and his voice is seldom broadcast. But defectors from North Korea describe him as an eloquent and tireless orator, primarily to military units that form the base of his support.
The reclusive Kim took power in 1994 after the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, North Korea's founding ruler. It was communism's first hereditary transfer of power, and both Kims are revered in a vast personality cult perpetrated by the country's authoritarian regime, which tolerates no dissent.
Kim Jong Il focused on the military in his "songun," or "military-first" credo — devoting much of the country's scarce resources to its troops — the world's fifth-largest military, the 1.1 million-strong People's Army.
The policy was manifested in Kim's pursuit of nuclear weapons that culminated in North Korea's first nuclear test explosion in October 2006.
However, Kim shut down the country's sole nuclear reactor in July after the U.S. helped resolve a separate financial dispute.
North Korea suffered famine and poverty in the mid-1990s with as many as 2 million people believed to have died due to the loss of Soviet aid, exacerbated by natural disasters and outdated farming methods.
Kim has laid the blame for North Korea's problems squarely on outside powers and the country hurls daily propaganda tirades at the United States and Japan.
His image is familiar around the world: short and rotund at 5-foot 3 inches, he wears platform shoes and a bouffant hairstyle to appear taller.
Khaki jumpsuits and sunglasses are his trademark attire.
He is said to be a movie fan who owns about 20,000 foreign films. He reportedly has produced several films, mostly historical epics with an ideological tinge.
He rarely travels abroad and then only by train, once heading all the way by luxury rail car to Moscow, where he also was able to indulge his taste for fine food. Still, he regularly travels within North Korea to military outposts or factories.
Kim's foodie ways are legendary but largely unconfirmed. Most of the tales come from defectors, foreign officials, journalists and chefs who got a rare peek inside the all powerful leader's bizarre world.
One account of Kim's lavish lifestyle came from Konstantin Pulikovsky, a former Russian presidential envoy who wrote a book, "The Orient Express," about Kim's train trip through Russia in July and August 2001.
Pulikovsky, who accompanied the North Korean leader, said Kim's 16-car private train was stocked with crates of French wine. Live lobsters were delivered in advance to stations, and gourmet feasts were eaten with silver chopsticks, he said.
Bradley K. Martin's book "Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader" included an account by Kenji Fujimoto, who claimed to be Kim's personal sushi chef. The Japanese man said Kim had a 10,000-bottle wine cellar and ate rare shark's fin soup weekly, the book reported.
"His banquets often started at midnight and lasted until morning. The longest lasted for four days," the chef was quoted as saying.
Kim is believed to have tempered his habits due to health problems — reported chronic heart disease and diabetes — in recent years and in photos appears to have trimmed his trademark paunch.
He was Kim Il Sung's eldest son by his late first wife, Kim Jung Sook. North Korea says he was born Feb. 16, 1942, in a "secret camp" at Mount Paekdu on the North Korea-China border when his father was supposedly a guerrilla fighter against the Japanese. Western officials say he was born in the Soviet Union.
He has three sons with two women, as well as a daughter by a third, but has not anointed any of them as his successor.
Some believe his eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, fell out of favor after embarrassing his father in 2001, when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport, saying he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland.
NKorea's Kim may have suffered stroke: US intelligence
North Koreans participate in celebrations for the 60th anniversary of the founding of North Korea in Pyongyang, September 9, 2008, in this picture distributed by North Korea's official news agency KCNA, September 10, 2008. North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has collapsed and is ill, a South Korean government official was quoted as saying on September 10, 2008 but analysts said it was not clear how serious his condition might be. Picture taken on September 9, 2008. REUTERS/KCNA (NORTH KOREA). NO THIRD PARTY SALES. NOT FOR USE BY REUTERS THIRD PARTY DISTRIBUTORS.
SEOUL (AFP) – North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il failed to appear Tuesday at a massive parade marking the communist country's 60th anniversary and a US intelligence official said he may have suffered a stroke.
The 66-year-old, who is known to suffer from diabetes and heart problems, was absent from the parade of reserve military forces, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, which monitored North Korean television.
"It does appear that Kim Jong-Il has had a health setback, possibly a stroke," said the official in Washington on condition of anonymity.
The official said it appeared to have happened in "the last couple of weeks" but there were no outward signs of a struggle to succeed him.
US intelligence was "pretty confident" of its health assessment, the official said, saying a stroke "possibly is what it looks like now."
Seoul's Chosun Ilbo newspaper said the South Korean embassy in Beijing had received an intelligence report that Kim collapsed on August 22.
The paper, quoting an embassy source, said the intelligence came from Chinese sources.
Chosun reported last Saturday that five Chinese doctors had been in North Korea for more than a week, possibly to treat Kim.
Kim's health has been the subject of intense speculation since he took over from his father, who died in 1994, in the communist world's only dynastic succession. He has not publicly nominated any successor.
Japan's Kyodo news agency said his absence from a major military parade was the first he has missed since he became head of the armed forces in 1991. He also did not appear at anniversary events Monday.
The parade was lower-key than expected, with less military hardware. Kyodo said military equipment such as anti-aircraft and anti-tank artillery were on display, but not tanks and missiles.
The regular army, navy and air force did not take part.
Instead, the North's titular number two Kim Yong-Nam inspected a parade of Worker and Peasant Red Guards, a reserve force.
Yonhap said he was flanked by Jo Myong-Rok, vice chairman of the National Defence Commission, which is chaired by Kim Jong-Il.
An official at South Korea's unification ministry, which handles cross-border relations, told AFP it would be unusual if Kim had failed to appear for such an important event.
Kyodo said the parade of reserves and Pyongyang residents filled Kim Il-Sung Square, which can hold about 100,000 people.
North Korean TV aired footage of the event at 9:00 pm even though the parade was staged during the day, according to a unification ministry official.
The official Korean Central News Agency carried no report on it. Late Tuesday KCNA said an official banquet held to mark the anniversary was attended by number two Kim Yong-Nam and senior army, state and party officials but there was no mention of Kim Jong-Il other than in speeches praising his leadership.
State media in North Korea, virtually the last outpost of Cold War-era communism, heaped praise on Kim despite acute food shortages, a foundering economy and a deadlocked aid-for-disarmament nuclear deal.
"There is no limit to the ideological and mental power of the military and the people united firmly under their leader," said Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the ruling party.
"We should continue to make utmost efforts to strengthen the military power of our republic," the editorial said, adding that it became a peerless military power with "a strong war deterrent" due to Kim's leadership.
The "war deterrent" is a reference to the nuclear programme which the North promised to shut down after an atomic weapons test in 2006.
But it has halted work to disable its plutonium-producing plants, and says it will start repairing them, following a deadlock in a six-nation disarmament deal.
The North relies on foreign aid to feed millions.
Its economy shrank 2.3 percent in 2007 from a year earlier, its second straight year of contraction as devastating floods hit harvests, the South Korean central bank said in June.
However, the austere capital Pyongyang had been refurbished for the anniversary and decorated with flowers and flags. Slogans extol the virtues of Kim and of his father and founding president Kim Il-Sung.
"Victory and glory for 60 years," read some.
Nuclear disarmament work has halted because of a dispute between the North and its negotiating partners about ways to verify the nuclear inventory it handed over in June.
Washington has refused to remove the North from a terrorism blacklist until agreement on verification is reached.
NKorea's Kim almost certainly has health problems: Yonhap
A portrait of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il displayed at an entrance of the foreign ministry in Pyongyang in 2002. Kim Jong-Il has apparently suffered a health setback, "possibly a stroke," a US intelligence official said Tuesday, noting he had not appeared at a 60th anniversary parade.
(AFP/File/Shingo Ito)
13 mins ago
SEOUL (AFP) – North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il "almost certainly" has health problems, a senior South Korean official told Yonhap news agency Wednesday.
Kim, 66, failed to appear Tuesday at a major parade marking the country's 60th anniversary and a US intelligence official said he may have suffered a stroke.
"It is almost certain that...Kim has a health problem," the official told Yonhap on condition of anonymity, adding that he seemed to have suffered a collapse.
In this photo released by China's Xinhua News Agency, militia women march across the Kim Il Sung Square in Pyongyang, North Korea Tuesday, Sept. 9, 2008.
(AP Photo/Xinhua, Zhang Binyang)
However, the official indicated Kim had not died. "It is certain that a disastrous thing has not happened to Chairman Kim," he told Yonhap.
Government officials refused to comment publicly.
President Lee Myung-Bak on Wednesday called an emergency meeting of top aides, a presidential source said.
"Lee discussed countermeasures to a possible serious illness of the North Korean leader during his unscheduled meeting with senior presidential secretaries," the source told Yonhap.
A presidential spokeswoman could not immediately confirm the meeting.
"The president and his senior aides discussed all abnormal indications from North Korea, as the North's situation appears to be serious following Kim Jong-Il 's absence from a high-profile founding anniversary parade on Tuesday," said the source.
Yang Moo-Jin, of Seoul's University of North Korean Studies, told AFP: "It is quite certain that some French and Chinese experts have entered North Korea to treat Kim Jong-Il but it remains unknown in what condition Kim is."
Kim is known to suffer from heart problems and diabetes, Seoul officials have said.
"It does appear that Kim Jong-Il has had a health setback, possibly a stroke," the US official said Tuesday in Washington on condition of anonymity.
The official said he appears to have fallen ill in the last couple of weeks but there were no outward signs of a struggle to succeed him.
US intelligence was "pretty confident" of its assessment of a health setback, the official said, adding a stroke "possibly is what it looks like now."
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