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Kim Jong-il (also written as Kim Jong Il) (born February 16, 1942) is the leader of North Korea. He is the Chairman of the National Defense Commission, Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army, and General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea (the ruling party since 1948). He succeeded his father Kim Il-sung, founder of North Korea, who died in 1994.
ChildhoodBirthMany official claims about Kim's life and activities are inconsistent with outside sources. Kim Jong-il's official biography states that he was born at Mount Paektu at 6 o'clock in the morning in northern Korea on February 16, 1942. Soviet records show he was born in the village of Vyatskoye, near Khabarovsk, where his father, Kim Il-sung, commanded the 1st Battalion of the Soviet 88th Brigade, made up of Chinese and Korean exiles.[1] The official biography also holds that his birth at Mount Paektu was foretold by a swallow, and heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow over the mountain and a new star in the heavens.[2] Kim Jong-il's mother, Kim Jong-suk, was Kim Il-sung's first wife. During his youth in the Soviet Union, Kim Jong-il was known as Yuri Irsenovich Kim (Юрий Ирсенович Ким), taking his patronymic from his father's Russified name, Ir-sen.
Image:Kim-il-sung Kim-jong-suk Kim-jong-il.jpg Three-year-old Kim Jong-il with his father Kim Il-sung and mother Kim Jong-suk in 1945. EducationKim probably received most of his education in the People's Republic of China, where he was sent away from his father for safety during the Korean War. According to the official biography, he graduated from Namsan School in Pyongyang, a special school for the children of Worker's Party officials. He is later said to have attended Kim Il-sung University and to have majored in Political Economy, graduating in 1964. His graduating class won the highest academic honor, Double Chollima. By the time of his graduation, his father, revered in the government's official pronouncements as "the Great Leader" (위대한 수령, widaehan suryŏng), had firmly consolidated control over the government. He is also said to have received English language education at the University of Malta in the early 1970s, on his infrequent holidays in Malta as guest of Prime Minister Dom Mintoff.[4] The elder Kim had meanwhile remarried and had another son, Kim Pyong-il (named after Kim Jong-il's drowned brother). It is unclear if Jong-il was chosen over Pyong-il, or whether Pyong-il was ever seriously considered as successor by his father. Since 1988, Kim Pyong-il has served in a series of North Korean embassies in Europe and is currently the North Korean ambassador to Poland. It is suspected that Kim Pyong-il was sent to these distant posts by Kim Il-sung in order to avoid a power struggle between his two sons.[5] Ruler of North KoreaImage:Kimjongil-wave.jpg Kim Jong-il President Kim Il-sung died July 8, 1994, at age 82 of a heart attack. He was not replaced as President, and received the designation of "Eternal President", resting in the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in central Pyongyang. The active position has been abolished in deference to the memory of Kim Il-sung. Kim Jong-il officially took the titles of General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea and chairman of the National Defense Commission on October 8, 1997. In 1998, his Defense Commission position was declared to be "the highest post of the state", so Kim may be regarded as North Korea's head of state from that date. This is the first, and so far only, time a socialist country's leadership has progressed in a dynastic succession. Since Kim is not the president, he is not constitutionally required to hold elections to confirm his legitimacy and has not done so. EconomyNorth Korea's state-controlled economy struggled throughout the 1990s, primarily due to the loss of strategic trade arrangements with the USSR[6] and strained relations with China - following China's normalization with South Korea in 1992.[7] In addition, North Korea experienced record-breaking floods (1995 and 1996) followed by several years of equally severe drought beginning in 1997.[8] This, compounded with only 18 percent arable land[9] and an inability to import the goods necessary to sustain industry,[10] led to an immense famine and left North Korea in economic shambles. Faced with a country in decay, Kim adopted a "Military-First" policy to strengthen the country and reinforce the regime.[11] On the national scale, this policy has produced a positive growth rate for the country since 1996, and the implementation of "landmark socialist-type market economic practices" in 2002 kept the North afloat despite a continued dependency on foreign aid for food.[12] In the wake of the devastation of the 1990s, the government began formally approving some activity of small-scale bartering and trade. As observed by Daniel Sneider, associate director for research at Stanford's Asia-Pacific Research Center, this flirtation with capitalism is "fairly limited, but — especially compared to the past — there are now remarkable markets that create the semblance of a free market system."[13] In 2002, Kim Jong-il declared that "money should be capable of measuring the worth of all commodities."[14] These gestures toward economic reform mirror similar actions taken by China's Deng Xiaoping in the late 1980s and early 90s. During a rare visit in 2006, Kim expressed admiration for China's rapid economic progress.[15] Foreign RelationsIn 1998, South Korean President Kim Dae-jung implemented a Sunshine policy to improve North-South relations and to allow South Korean companies to start projects in the North. Kim Jong-il announced plans to import and develop new technologies to develop North Korea's fledgling software industry. As a result of the new policy, the Kaesong Industrial Park was constructed in 2003 just north of the inter-Korean border, with the planned participation of 250 South Korean companies, employing 100,000 North Koreans, by 2007.[16] However, by March 2007, the Park contained only 21 companies - employing 12,000 North Korean workers.[17] In 1994, North Korea and the United States signed an Agreed Framework which was designed to freeze and eventually dismantle the North's nuclear weapons program in exchange for aid in producing two power-generating nuclear reactors.[18] In 2002, Kim Jong-il's government admitted to having produced nuclear weapons since the 1994 agreement. Kim's regime argued the secret production was necessary for security purposes - citing the presence of United States owned nuclear weapons in South Korea and the new tensions with the U.S. under President George W Bush.[19] Internal PoliticsNorth Korea remains silent on the issue of an appointed successor. South Korean media have suggested that he is grooming his son, Kim Jong-chul; however, Kim Yong Hyun, a political expert at the Institute for North Korean Studies at Seoul's Dongguk University, believes any appointee would be outside the family. "Even the North Korean establishment would not advocate a continuation of the family dynasty at this point."[20] His eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, was earlier believed to be the designated heir, but he appears to have fallen out of favor after being arrested at Narita International Airport in Narita, Japan, near Tokyo, in 2001 while traveling on a forged passport.[21] In November 2004 ITAR-TASS published reports that unnamed foreign diplomats in Pyongyang had observed the removal of portraits of Kim Jong-il around the country.[22] The North Korean government vigorously denied these reports. Radiopress, the Japanese radio monitoring agency, reported later that month that North Korean media stopped referring to Kim by the honorific "Dear Leader" and instead Korean Central Television, the Korean Central News Agency and other media described him under "lesser" titles such as "General Secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea", "Chairman of the DPRK National Defense Commission", and "Supreme Commander of the Korean People's Army".[23] It is unclear whether the possible curtailing of Kim's personality cult indicated a struggle within the North Korean leadership or whether it was a deliberate attempt by Kim to moderate his image in the outside world.[24] CriticismKim Jong-il has been routinely criticized by world governments and international NGOs for human rights abuses carried out under his rule, as well as for North Korea's production of nuclear weapons, contrary to previous legal, international obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and his own commitment to make the Korean Peninsula free of nuclear weapons. Camp 22 is North Korea's largest concentration camp, where up to 50,000 men, women and children accused of political "crimes" are held. Reports of gross violations of human rights by the guards have been reported, such as murdering babies born to inmates.[25] Kim's expensive taste has become a media target. In the context of United Nations sanctions restricting the trade in luxury items to North Korea following the country's October 2006 nuclear test, Reuters coverage noted that "No one enjoys luxury goods more than paramount leader Kim Jong-il, who boasts the country's finest wine cellar with space for 10,000 bottles. Kim has a penchant for fine food such as lobster, caviar and the most expensive cuts of sushi that he has flown in to him from Japan."[26] His annual purchases of Hennessy cognac reportedly total to $700,000, while the average North Korean earns the rough estimate equivalent of $900 per year.[27] Personal lifeThere is no official information available about the marital history of the Kim Jong-il, but he is believed to have been officially married once with three mistresses:
Like his father, Kim has a profound fear of flying, and has always traveled by private armored train for state visits to Russia and China. The BBC reported that Konstantin Pulikovsky, a Russian emissary who traveled with Kim across Russia by train, told reporters that Kim had live lobsters air-lifted to the train every day which he ate with silver chopsticks - historically used in the Chinese Imperial Palace to detect poison.[31] Kim is said to be a huge film buff, owning a collection of more than 20,000 video tapes.[32] His reported favorites are the slasher film Friday The 13th, Rambo, the James Bond and Godzilla series, any movie with Elizabeth Taylor, and Hong Kong action movies.[33] He is the author of the book On the Art of the Cinema. In 1978, on the orders of Kim, South Korean film director Shin Sang-ok and his actress wife Choe Eun-hui were kidnapped in order to build a North Korean film industry.[34] In 2006 he was involved in the production of the Juche (self-reliance) based movie Diary of a Girl Student – depicting the life of a girl whose parents are scientists – with a KCNA news report stating that Kim "improved its script and guided its production".[35] Kim reportedly enjoys basketball. Former United States Secretary of State Madeleine Albright ended her summit with Kim by presenting him with a basketball signed by NBA legend Michael Jordan.[36] Also an apparent golfer, North Korean state media reports that Kim routinely shoots three or four holes-in-one per round.[37] His official biography also claims Kim has composed six operas and enjoys staging elaborate musicals.[38] See alsoNotes and references
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