north koreans mourn death of kim il-sung
SEOUL — North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has died aged 69 of a heart attack, state media announced Monday, putting the nuclear-armed and deeply isolated nation into a second dynastic succession.
State television, which delivered the shock news in a tearful announcement from a female news reader, aired footage of hysterical North Koreans, young and old alike, pounding the ground in a display of abject grief. The announcer, wearing black, struggled to keep back the tears as she said he had died of physical and mental over-work.
According to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), "The "Dear Leader",passed away from a great mental and physical strain" at 8:30 am on Saturday (2330 GMT Friday) while travelling by train on one of his field trips.
The KCNA urged people to support the Swiss-educated Kim Jong-Un, who is in his late 20s and was last year made a four-star general and given top ruling party posts despite having had no public profile.
Neighbouring China and Russia, both influential players in Pyongyang, sent their condolences and observers said Beijing would beef up its all-important patronage to prevent an implosion in the communist North.
Images from inside the secretive state showed people in the streets of Pyongyang weeping at the news of his death. Ruling party members in one North Korean county were shown by state TV banging tables and crying out loud, the AFP news agency reports. "I can't believe it," a party member named as Kang Tae-Ho was quoted as saying. "How can he go like this? What are we supposed to do?" Another, Hong Sun-Ok, said: "He tried so hard to make our lives much better and he just left like this."
Such is the cult of personality surrounding Kim Jong-il, and the deification of his family, that the shock resulting from his death is genuine, some North Korea experts say. “People have been taught from their earliest years to see Kim Jong Il, like his father Kim Il Sung before him, as a God-like figure,” says Mike Chinoy, senior fellow at the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California and the author of “Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Koean Nuclear Crisis.”
As the Communist state began 10 days of intense public mourning, the country's authorities called for North Korea's people to back Kim Jong Il's third son as their new leader. "The North's top guys have already sorted out everything and the regime seems to be stable under the new leadership," said Paik Hak-Soon of Seoul's Sejong Institute. "I don't expect any major turbulence or power struggle within the regime in the foreseeable future. "The Kim Jong-Un era has already started."
Kim Jong-Il's only sister Kim Kyong-Hui and her husband Jang Song-Thaek, the country's unofficial number-two leader, are expected to act as the younger Kim's mentors and throw their weight behind the son's leadership.
Analysts stressed that North Korea was entering an uncertain period, although its senior figures were likely to stick closely together for now.
Sources:
TheWashingtonPost
canada.com
3 News
ABC News
herald-mail
WSJ.com
BBC News
huffingtonpost
CBC News
dailymail
NYTimes
Reuters.com
SEOUL — North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has died aged 69 of a heart attack, state media announced Monday, putting the nuclear-armed and deeply isolated nation into a second dynastic succession.
State television, which delivered the shock news in a tearful announcement from a female news reader, aired footage of hysterical North Koreans, young and old alike, pounding the ground in a display of abject grief. The announcer, wearing black, struggled to keep back the tears as she said he had died of physical and mental over-work.
According to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), "The "Dear Leader",passed away from a great mental and physical strain" at 8:30 am on Saturday (2330 GMT Friday) while travelling by train on one of his field trips.
The KCNA urged people to support the Swiss-educated Kim Jong-Un, who is in his late 20s and was last year made a four-star general and given top ruling party posts despite having had no public profile.Neighbouring China and Russia, both influential players in Pyongyang, sent their condolences and observers said Beijing would beef up its all-important patronage to prevent an implosion in the communist North.
Images from inside the secretive state showed people in the streets of Pyongyang weeping at the news of his death. Ruling party members in one North Korean county were shown by state TV banging tables and crying out loud, the AFP news agency reports. "I can't believe it," a party member named as Kang Tae-Ho was quoted as saying. "How can he go like this? What are we supposed to do?" Another, Hong Sun-Ok, said: "He tried so hard to make our lives much better and he just left like this."
Such is the cult of personality surrounding Kim Jong-il, and the deification of his family, that the shock resulting from his death is genuine, some North Korea experts say. “People have been taught from their earliest years to see Kim Jong Il, like his father Kim Il Sung before him, as a God-like figure,” says Mike Chinoy, senior fellow at the U.S.-China Institute at the University of Southern California and the author of “Meltdown: The Inside Story of the North Koean Nuclear Crisis.”
“The whole system has been organized around the Kim cult — mass worship of the leader, propaganda telling the population that everything in life comes from the benevolence of the leader,” he says. “So it is not surprising that his death is a profound and unsettling shock to most North Koreans.”
As the Communist state began 10 days of intense public mourning, the country's authorities called for North Korea's people to back Kim Jong Il's third son as their new leader. "The North's top guys have already sorted out everything and the regime seems to be stable under the new leadership," said Paik Hak-Soon of Seoul's Sejong Institute. "I don't expect any major turbulence or power struggle within the regime in the foreseeable future. "The Kim Jong-Un era has already started."
Kim Jong-Il's only sister Kim Kyong-Hui and her husband Jang Song-Thaek, the country's unofficial number-two leader, are expected to act as the younger Kim's mentors and throw their weight behind the son's leadership.
Analysts stressed that North Korea was entering an uncertain period, although its senior figures were likely to stick closely together for now.
Sources:
TheWashingtonPost
canada.com
3 News
ABC News
herald-mail
WSJ.com
BBC News
huffingtonpost
CBC News
dailymail
NYTimes
Reuters.com
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