North Korea's Kim Jong-il dead at 69

Secretive nation's "Dear Leader" dies after massive heart attack, reports say, prompting outpour of national mourning.

Kim Jong-il, the leader of North Korea, has died at the age of 69 after suffering a heart attack, North Korean state media has announced.

Kim, known in the communist country as the "Dear Leader", died on Saturday aboard a train during a trip out of Pyongyang, the state-run KCNA news agency said on Monday. 

"It is the biggest loss for the party ... and it is our people and nation's biggest sadness," a tearful presenter said as she announced the death on state television. 

The  presenter also urged the country, people and military to "faithfully revere respectable comrade Kim Jong-un" - Kim's third son and apparent heir.

"At the leadership of comrade Kim Jong-un, we have to change sadness to strength and courage and overcome today's difficulties," she said.

Kim Jong-il last year appointed his third son, Kim Jong-un, to a number of high-ranking posts in moves seen as positioning Kim Jong-un as his assumed successor after years of speculation about the elder Kim's fading health.

The announcement of Kim's death prompted South Korea to place its military on emergency alert, while shares on the stock market in Seoul fell nearly five per cent amid uncertainty over the stability of the secretive nuclear-armed nation.

South Korea's government called an emergency national security council meeting, and the country's central bank and market regulators also announced emergency meetings.

Reclusive 'Dear Leader'

Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but 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.

But the leader, reputed to have had a taste for cigars, cognac and gourmet cuisine, was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease.

"Just a couple of days ago, it was publicised that he was visiting a military installation," Don Kirk of the Christian Science Monitor told Al Jazeera.

"Obviously there will be a long period of pubilc mourning in the country, but the sense is that at least he organised his succession with [his son] Kim Jong-un taking over," he said.

Footage broadcast on CCTV, China's main news agency, showed interviews with North Koreans barely able to contain their grief.

An autopsy was performed on Sunday, and the North declared a period of national mourning from December 17 to 29. The KCNA news agency said that Kim's funeral would take place on December 28.

'Axis of evil'

Kim took power in 1994 upon the death of his father, Kim Il-sung, who had led North Korea since the Korean peninsula was split in half by the Korean War. Although the two sides signed a ceasefire in 1953 they remain technically at war.

While Kim Il-sung retained the title of "Eternal President", Kim took the posts of chairman of the national defence commission, commander of the Korean People's Army and head of the ruling Worker's Party.

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.

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 US for his country's troubles and his regime routinely derides Washington-allied South Korea as a "puppet" of the Western superpower.

US 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.

Source : ALJAZEERA

Posted in: World News