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Politics : Politics for Pros- moderated -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: D. Long who wrote (43784)	5/12/2004 2:48:47 AM
From: D. Long	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 793917

drumbeat.mlaterz.net Kim Jong-Il's successor looms around his 61st birthday AFP, February 15, 2003 TOKYO - As North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il marks his 61st birthday on Sunday amid a nuclear crisis, his second son Kim Jong-Chol is looming as his successor in the world's only communist dynasty. Japan's Kyodo news agency reported Saturday, quoting an internal North Korean military document, that work was under way to propagate a cult around Ko Yong-Hui, Kim Jong-Il's current wife, who was said to be born in Japan. Ko, aged around 50 and kept from the public eye, is the mother of Kim Jong-Chol, 21, who has emerged from the shadow of his elder half-brother Jong-Nam, 10 years his senior, according to analysts here and in Seoul. Jong-Nam, Kim Jong Il's eldest son, had previously been touted as the leader's heir-apparent. However, he now appears to be out of the leadership race since being deported from Japan in 2001 for using a false passport and last year's death of his 65-year-old mother Sung Hae Rim, a former actress. He has yet to return to North Korea. The propaganda process for Ko began in the middle of last year, Kyodo quoted the document as saying, indicating the start of preparations to groom Jong Chol as Kim Jong Il's successor. Kim Jong Il inherited the country's leadership when his father Kim Il-Sung died in 1994 after moulding a Stalinist state with his dogma of "juche" (self-reliance) after the Korean peninsula was divided at the end of World War II. Ko is lauded in terms as a "mother" in the document published by the North Korean People's Army in August 2002, Kyodo said. The so-called "lecture document," which is restricted for internal reference, says, "We shall defend to the death the high command of the revolution led by great comrade Kim Jong Il," according to the report. It adds: "The esteemed mother (Ko) is the most loyal among the endlessly loyal to the revered supreme commander comrade (Kim Jong Il)." Moreover, Ko is commended on par with Kim Jong Il's mother Kim Jong Sook, considered one of the country's "three generals" along with the leader and his father, the document says. Kim Jong-Il is widely reported to have sired at least two sons and two daughters by four women. Ko's existence has recently emerged in South Korean and Japanese media. Informed sources have portrayed her as a former prima donna in North Korea's song-and-dance troupe, who moved from Japan to the north in the early 1960s with her father, a judo master born on the southern Korean island of Cheju. Kim Jong-Chol reportedly works at the propaganda and agitation division of North Korea's all-powerful Workers Party after studying at an international school in the Swiss city of Bern. According to a South Korean magazine, he is a fan of games in the US National Basketball Association and had his father build basketball courts at their villas around the impoverished nation.