Kim Jong Il has died

[Metalhead]

Kim Jong Il's nukes, threats stoked world fears | Asian Headlines | World News | Comcast

SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Jong Il,

the mercurial and enigmatic North Korean leader whose iron rule and nuclear

ambitions dominated world security fears for more than a decade, has died. He

was 69.

Kim's death 17 years after he inherited power from his father was announced

Monday by the state television from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. The

country's "Dear Leader" — reputed to have had a taste for cigars, cognac and

gourmet cuisine — was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease.

North Korea has been grooming Kim's third son to take over power from his

father in the impoverished nation that celebrates the ruling family with an

intense cult of personality.

Kim's longtime pursuit of nuclear weapons and his military's repeated threats

to South Korea and the U.S. have stoked fears that war might again break out or

that North Korea might provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorist

movements.

South Korea put its military on "high alert" and President Lee Myung-bak

convened a national security council meeting after the news of Kim's death. The

two Koreas remain technically in a state of war more than 50 years after the

peninsula's Cold War-era armed conflict ended in a cease-fire.

Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but he had appeared

relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia

and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state

media.

Kim Jong Il inherited power after his father, revered North Korean founder

Kim Il Sung, died in 1994. He had been groomed for 20 years to lead the

communist nation founded by his guerrilla fighter-turned-politician father and

built according to the principle of "juche," or self-reliance.

In September 2010, Kim Jong Il unveiled his third son, the twenty-something

Kim Jong Un, as his successor, putting him in high-ranking posts.

Even with a successor, there had been some fear among North Korean observers

of a behind-the-scenes power struggle or nuclear instability upon the elder

Kim's death.

Few firm facts are available when it comes to North Korea, one of the most

isolated countries in the world, and not much is clear about the man known as

the "Dear Leader."

North Korean legend has it that Kim was born on Mount Paekdu, one of Korea's

most cherished sites, in 1942, a birth heralded in the heavens by a pair of

rainbows and a brilliant new star. Soviet records, however, indicate he was born

in Siberia, in 1941.

Kim Il Sung, who for years fought for independence from Korea's colonial

ruler, Japan, from a base in Russia, emerged as a communist leader after

returning to Korea in 1945 after Japan was defeated in World War II.

With the peninsula divided between the Soviet-administered north and the

U.S.-administered south, Kim rose to power as North Korea's first leader in 1948

while Syngman Rhee became South Korea's first president.

The North invaded the South in 1950, sparking a war that would last three

years, kill millions of civilians and leave the peninsula divided by a

Demilitarized Zone that today remains one of the world's most heavily

fortified.

In the North, Kim Il Sung meshed Stalinist ideology with a cult of

personality that encompassed him and his son. Their portraits hang in every

building in North Korea and on the lapels of every dutiful North Korean.

Kim Jong Il, a graduate of Pyongyang's Kim Il Sung University, was 33 when

his father anointed him his eventual successor.

Even before he took over as leader, there were signs the younger Kim would

maintain — and perhaps exceed — his father's hard-line stance.

South Korea has accused Kim of masterminding a 1983 bombing that killed 17

South Korean officials visiting Burma, now known as Myanmar. In 1987, the

bombing of a Korean Air Flight killed all 115 people on board; a North Korean

agent who confessed to planting the device said Kim ordered the downing of the

plane himself.

Kim Jong Il took over after his father died in 1994, eventually taking the

posts of chairman of the National Defense Commission, commander of the Korean

People's Army and head of the ruling Worker's Party while his father remained as

North Korea's "eternal president."

He faithfully carried out his father's policy of "military first," devoting

much of the country's scarce resources to its troops — even as his people

suffered from a prolonged famine — and built the world's fifth-largest

military.

Kim also sought to build up the country's nuclear arms arsenal, which

culminated in North Korea's first nuclear test explosion, an underground blast

conducted in October 2006. Another test came in 2009, prompting U.N.

sanctions.

Alarmed, regional leaders negotiated a disarmament-for-aid pact that the

North signed in 2007 and began implementing later that year.

However, the process continues to be stalled, even as diplomats work to

restart negotiations.

North Korea, long hampered by sanctions and unable to feed its own people, is

desperate for aid. Flooding in the 1990s that destroyed the largely mountainous

country's arable land left millions hungry.

Following the famine, the number of North Koreans fleeing the country through

China rose dramatically, with many telling tales of hunger, political

persecution and rights abuses that officials in Pyongyang emphatically

denied.

Kim often blamed the U.S. for his country's troubles and his regime routinely

derides Washington-allied South Korea as a "puppet" of the Western

superpower.

U.S. President George W. Bush, taking office in 2002, denounced North Korea

as a member of an "axis of evil" that also included Iran and Iraq. He later

described Kim as a "tyrant" who starved his people so he could build nuclear

weapons.

"Look, Kim Jong Il is a dangerous person. He's a man who starves his people.

He's got huge concentration camps. And ... there is concern about his capacity

to deliver a nuclear weapon," Bush said in 2005.

Kim was an enigmatic leader. But defectors from North Korea describe him as

an eloquent and tireless orator, primarily to the military units that form the

base of his support.

The world's best glimpse of the man was in 2000, when the liberal South

Korean government's conciliatory "sunshine" policy toward the North culminated

in the first-ever summit between the two Koreas and followed with unprecedented

inter-Korean cooperation.

A second summit was held in 2007 with South Korea's Roh Moo-hyun.

But the thaw in relations drew to a halt in early 2008 when conservative

President Lee Myung-bak took office in Seoul pledging to come down hard on

communist North Korea.

Disputing accounts that Kim was "peculiar," former U.S. Secretary of State

Madeleine Albright characterized Kim as intelligent and well-informed, saying

the two had wide-ranging discussions during her visits to Pyongyang when Bill

Clinton was U.S. president.

"I found him very much on top of his brief," she said.

Kim cut a distinctive, if oft ridiculed, figure. Short and pudgy at 5-foot-3,

he wore platform shoes and sported a permed bouffant. His trademark attire of

jumpsuits and sunglasses was mocked in such films as "Team America: World

Police," a movie populated by puppets that was released in 2004.

Kim was said to have cultivated wide interests, including professional

basketball, cars and foreign films. He reportedly produced several North Korean

films as well, mostly historical epics with an ideological tinge.

A South Korean film director claimed Kim even kidnapped him and his movie

star wife in the late 1970s, spiriting them back to North Korea to make movies

for him for a decade before they managed to escape from their North Korean

agents during a trip to Austria.

Kim rarely traveled abroad and then only by train because of an alleged fear

of flying, once heading all the way by luxury rail car to Moscow, indulging in

his taste for fine food along the way.

One account of Kim's lavish lifestyle came from Konstantin Pulikovsky, a

former Russian presidential envoy who wrote the 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.

A Japanese cook later claimed he was Kim's personal sushi chef for a decade,

writing that Kim had a wine cellar stocked with 10,000 bottles, and that, in

addition to sushi, Kim ate shark's fin soup — a rare delicacy — weekly.

"His banquets often started at midnight and lasted until morning. The longest

lasted for four days," the chef, who goes by the pseudonym Kenji Fujimoto, was

quoted as saying.

Kim is believed to have curbed his indulgent ways in recent years and looked

slimmer in more recent video footage aired by North Korea's state-run

broadcaster.

Kim's marital status wasn't clear but he is believed to have married once and

had at least three other companions. He had at least three sons with two women,

as well as a daughter by a third.

His eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, 38, is believed to have fallen out of favor

with his father after he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport in

2001 saying he wanted to visit Disney's Tokyo resort.

His two other sons by another woman, Kim Jong Chul and Kim Jong Un, are in

their 20s. Their mother reportedly died several years ago.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T9uuPza41Uw

Wonder how this is going to play out.

Edited December 19, 2011 by Metalhead

[Guest ArmyVeteran37214]

I'm excited to see how things play out. Maybe, the two halves can finally become whole again. It will take time and alot of work. I don't blame The Republic of Korea for putting its military on high alert. I guess its better to be over prepared than (caught with pants down) under prepared. Also if the two halves can reunite, than we can finally bring home our troops that have been deployed there. God know how much money we flush down the crapper being there every year.

[Guest Revelator]

No big deal. That place isn't coming out of the dark ages anytime soon.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

I won't be holding my breath about the two halves ever coming together. That is just a military

dictatorship that will probably remain or could even get worse. It depends on who really held the

power for the last decade or so, and what kind of military leaders are wanting to gain what.

And then, there's China.

[Guest pfries]

And then, there's China.

I highly doubt it will get any better and reasonably fear it may get worse.

Now China has had my hair on end for a long while.

[leroy]

The way i see things; the Death Angel has brought the world an early Christmas present. It's kinda like the line in the movie "Judge Roy Bean", after Roy shoots Bad Bob in the back. Folks are talking about the questionable shot, then a pragmatist says: "....Who cares, he's dead aint he....". That about sums up how i see this thing. I'm glad this totalitarian son of satan is dead.

I've got some dear friends that are Korean. There is great concern and worry about family at home on both sides of the border. I would love to see things straighten up there. My guess is that it wont. Most likely the "kim Jong" juniors or whoever takes over will be just as bad as ole Kim was.

leroy

[DaveTN]

China has reason to defuse the nuclear threats that have been coming out of North Korea. It will be interesting to see how this plays out. You can bet the U.S., China, and the Russians are deeply involved in this.

[oldogy]

No great loss to humanity.

oldogy

[daddyo]

Good riddance to another merciless, brutal dictator.

[MacGyver]

Break out the Napolean Brandy. Good riddance, 'lil Kim.

Let's hope Kim Jong Un doesn't follow the standard path presenting a more sadistic version of his father.

[greenego]

20 something year old son to take over. Questionable as to how strong he will be. I look for some type of military takeover.

[Guest bkelm18]

20 something year old son to take over. Questionable as to how strong he will be. I look for some type of military takeover.

Word is that Kim Jong Il's brother will be in charge behind the scenes for some time before they fully let the son take over.

[R_Bert]

Heh, Knox News Sentinal had an article, with a great set of comments going. They removed it.

[G27]

et's hope Kim Jong Un doesn't follow the standard path presenting a more sadistic version of his father.

I'm guessing that an unrealistic expectation. From what I've been reading, he's been in charge of the military testing for some time - it was apparently his call to launch all those missles and even do the nuclear testing.

[MacGyver]

I'm guessing that an unrealistic expectation. From what I've been reading, he's been in charge of the military testing for some time - it was apparently his call to launch all those missles and even do the nuclear testing.

Yeah. Sons of megalomaniacal dictators are a rare breed. On the bright side, they rarely survive for too long.

[Jonnin]

20 is young enough to do something rash, I would rather have had another 10 years of the known, but stable, situation. Sigh, the most likely outcome I see is MORE of my tax dollars sent to some other country to accomplish nothing.

[Chucktshoes]

Bright side, Kim Jong-Il is now a good commie.

[Guest WyattEarp]

Most likely the "kim Jong" juniors or whoever takes over will be just as bad as ole Kim was.

leroy

Sounds like a good reason to dispatch a new work order over to the boys in SEAL team 6. I'm sure they could use a nice confidence booster right now as a follow up to sending old Bin Laden to Hell.

[Guest 6.8 AR]

Nah, they'll send Al Gore to kiss the new one's ring.

[mikegideon]

A buddy's Facebook post ...

With the death of North Korean psycopathic nerd Kim Jong Il, his heir apparent is "dictator boy" Kim Jong Un, his 3rd son said to be in his early 20s...all that is known about him is that he went to school in Switzerland, where his former classmates describe him as "weird and creepy", he loves the Chicago Bulls, has the same doofus haircut as his father, and, according to an anonymous high ranking official "doesn't know sh*t"...he has notorious "pony parties" where he and his cronies drunkenly saddle the servants and ride them through the palace, firing old Colt pistols at the windows...nervous ally China is bracing for a "flood of refugees"...

[ls3_kid]

As long as these two go over there and take care of the new boy, we should be ok.

NWS

But seriously I think he will be worse than his father.

[Guest bkelm18]

Sounds like a good reason to dispatch a new work order over to the boys in SEAL team 6. I'm sure they could use a nice confidence booster right now as a follow up to sending old Bin Laden to Hell.

While I agree, assassinating the head of state of a foreign nation wouldn't be looked upon too kindly by the rest of the world.

[greenego]

While I agree, assassinating the head of state of a foreign nation wouldn't be looked upon too kindly by the rest of the world.

And it is against U.S. law to do so.

[BrasilNuts]

[Guest WyattEarp]

While I agree, assassinating the head of state of a foreign nation wouldn't be looked upon too kindly by the rest of the world.

i doubt too many people in other countries aside from Russia and Iran, will be shedding any tears over the death of this knucklehead, if the U.S. were to take some action.

I just wonder why don't these tired, mentally exhausted, starving, frustrated citizens of N. Korea, get tired of this **** and overthrow these bullies? That's all they are. is a bunch of big bullies who hide behind a protective security detail. those people need to fight back, and take their country back.

I for the life of me could not be on a protective security detail for someone like this, knowing they are murdering innocent people, starving them, and not looking out for the best interests of their people, and putting themselves first. If I were in a country like this, I'd have to work my way up to the top of the ladder and get on the security detail, and when the opportunity was right, take this guy and his family out. I'm just surprised someone hasn't done this yet.

the people of North Korea, must like the abuse. maybe it's the same way with them as it is with women who get treated like dirt by men, yet remain in the relationship anyways.

And it is against U.S. law to do so.

don't make laugh. our laws have never stopped our government from acting before. the CIA is also well versed enough and has the resources, to pull it off and make it look like someone else did it.