The mystery woman from N. Korea is leader's wife

SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korea's new young leader, Kim Jong-un, is married, state media said on Wednesday, putting an end to speculation over the relationship with a woman seen at his side during recent events.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (C) and his wife (red), who was named by the state broadcaster as Ri Sol-ju, visit the Rungna People's Pleasure Ground in Pyongyang in this undated picture released by the North's KCNA on July 25, 2012. REUTERS/KCNA

The announcement, which fits a trend the upbeat Kim has followed to break out of the dour management style of his late father, Kim Jong-il, came just two weeks after he was seen at a gala performance accompanied by the woman, with rumours swirling as to whether she was his wife, lover or sister.

"Kim Jong-un's move appears to give the youth hoping for change, especially young women, a favourable impression of him although it can make conservative old North Koreans uncomfortable," said Cheong Seong-chang, a senior fellow at the Sejong Institute think tank.

"Although Kim Jong-un continues a one-man dictatorship, he is expected to have a more open attitude in culture than in the Kim Jong-il era."

Some observers in South Korea speculated she was a singer, Hyon Song-wol, he dated years ago before his father put a stop to it, but who was now back on the scene.

But the North Korean state broadcaster named his wife as Ri Sol-ju, without giving details. It is not clear when the two tied the knot.

Recent TV footage showed the two laughing with each other, touching a child's hair together and clapping while watching a performance featuring western show tunes and Mickey Mouse.

"While a welcoming song was playing, our party and people's supreme leader, Marshal Kim Jong-un, came out from a ceremony of the completion (of a 'pleasure ground') with wife, Ri Sol-ju," it said.

Kim, in his late-20s, took over the family dynasty last December with the death of his father, whose rule took North Korea deeper into isolation, abject poverty and large-scale political repression.

KIM DID IT HIS WAY

Since then he has taken a more glitzy approach, at least on the surface, to ruling a country which is locked in a stand-off with the West over its nuclear weapons programme.

Once the official mourning period was over, the youngest Kim to rule North Korea was seen laughing with fusty old generals, gesticulating in delight at a military parade and, the biggest shock of all, speaking. Most North Koreans went to their graves never having seen Kim the elder speak.

Kim the younger has steadily worked to impose his own stamp on the top leadership of North Korea, and on Sunday ousted Vice Marshal Ri Yong-ho, the country's leading military figure, who was seen as close to Kim Jong-il.

Kim was named marshal of the army in a move that adds to his glittering array of titles and cements his power. He already heads the Workers' Party of Korea and is First Chairman of the National Defence Commission.

He is also gearing up to experiment with agricultural and economic reforms after purging Ri Yong-ho for opposing change, a source with ties to both Pyongyang and Beijing told Reuters earlier.

This month's unusual gala performance, where Kim was seen with his wife, featured Walt Disney's "It's A Small World", a thumping rock version of the theme tune to "Rocky" and Frank Sinatra's "My Way", a song that might have particular appeal to the Kim family, whose word is law in North Korea.

Bizarrely for a state which frequently voices its loathing for all things American, it featured a cast of Disney characters, including Winnie the Pooh and Minnie Mouse.

The family does have a previous Disney connection: the ruler's elder brother, Kim Jong-nam, said he was on his way to Tokyo Disneyland when he was caught illegally entering Japan in 2001.

(Editing by Nick Macfie)

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 Who is this mystery woman from North Korea?

Can Kim Jong-un be North Korea's Deng Xiaoping?

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By Isabel Hilton guardian.co.uk,

The death of Kim Jong-il recalls Mao's. But China, unlike paranoid North Korea, opted for the path of reform 

A North Korean child is overcome by grief at the death of Kim Jong-il. Photograph: AP

There is little room for nuance in our view of North Korea. State television parades sobbing citizens and soldiers apparently convulsed with grief at the loss of Kim Jong-il. Western commentators dismiss these scenes as propaganda.

Much of this display is certainly ritual, enacted for the camera and for watching comrades and informers. To fail to grieve for the loss of the "dear leader" is a poor career move. But for some the emotions may be real enough: the regime has cultivated in the people an intense gratitude to the Kim family, from the hero-founder Kim Il-sung, whose centenary will be celebrated next year, to his grandson, Kim Jong-un.

Kim Il-sung died in 1994, a time of terrible famine when there was little to be grateful for in North Korea. But refugees interviewed by the American journalist Barbara Demick – men and women who escaped to the south – reported their own intense feelings of bereavement for a leader whom they had been taught to revere as the embodiment of North Korean resistance, nationalism and independence.



Viewed from Beijing, these displays are easier to read: the death of Mao Zedong, whose tyrannical gifts were more than equal to those of the Kim dynasty, sparked similar scenes in China. Like the North Koreans, Chinese had lived under a regime of intense ideological control with limited information about the outside world, and were taught to regard their leader as the embodiment of national resistance to foreign aggression. Mao has never been dethroned as the regime's founding father, but as Beijing struggles to maintain its own internal stability, the question it asks of its troublesome neighbour is: will North Korea follow the Chinese path to reform?

In China Deng Xiaoping was waiting in the wings, a military and political veteran who triumphed over Mao by outliving him and doggedly undoing his legacy. North Koreans, instead, are expected to transfer their affections to a chubby 28 year-old who was catapulted to four-star general status in September last year. The customary chestful of medals will doubtless follow.

Kim Jong-il was nobody's political naif, so we must assume that he judged his third son the best available choice. The fact remains that, beyond the cachet of his DNA, Kim Jong-un has no military or political heft. Whether he has any interest in reform is impossible to gauge; whether it would matter if he did seems unlikely – he will depend on the support of military and the party for his power, and any change of course would have to begin there.

Planning for this transition has been under way since Kim Jong-il's stroke in 2008 with Beijing taking a close interest. China has muted its irritation at North Korea's repeated provocations and stepped up economic and trade relations as a buffer against any derailment of the succession planning. For now, Beijing hopes it will go smoothly enough to avoid any disturbance in China's three north-eastern border provinces.

The Chinese army has well-honed contingency plans to intervene in North Korea in the event of a breakdown, but hopes never to be forced to enact them, standing instead as Pyongyang's guarantor of investment, and of food and energy supplies. Beijing has no desire to cope with a flood of refugees across its nearly 900 miles of border, or to risk the intervention from US-backed South Korea that a collapse in the north could provoke.

The Chinese press has increasingly questioned what China gets out of the relationship with North Korea. For now, though, China has little choice but to pay the bills, while nudging the regime towards the kind of transformational reforms that Deng Xiaoping launched after the death of Mao.

A leadership change offers the regime an opportunity to shape a new narrative, and China's experience till now shows that economic reform need not threaten authoritarian power. To date, though, Pyongyang has shown only limited enthusiasm for the Chinese model. Without more radical reform, the already enormous economic gap between North Korea and its neighbours will only grow, and keep the country isolated and paranoid.

North Korean dependency on China is already stark: China provides 90% of the investment and accounts for 80% of North Korea's trade. China is building power plants, roads and transport infrastructure, Chinese businesses have invested in factories in North Korea's economic development zones, and exports of iron ore and coal to China from North Korea are important earners.

For both Beijing and Pyongyang, this dependency is a mixed blessing. South Korea, Japan and the US may be the bogeymen invoked to frighten North Korean children, but North Korea is also wary of becoming an economic colony of its giant neighbour. North Korea's main international weapon is blackmail: waving its nuclear capability in the face of the US and threatening China with instability. It works, after a fashion, but it is not a recipe for early reform.

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N Korean leader Kim Jong Il dies !

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Kim Jong Il dies aged 70

Little is likely in North Korean after the death of its leader Kim Jong Il. Daniel Flitton reports.

• A skilled and ruthless ruler
• Son, 27, now a 4-star general
• Son who shuns the limelight
• Kim's kids: the playboy and the pupil

Kim Jong-il, the second-generation North Korean dictator who defied global condemnation to build nuclear weapons while his people starved, has died at the age of 69, Yonhap News reported.

The South Korean military has been put on emergency alert with their communist neighbour now set to follow Kim Jong-il's son Kim Jong-un, believed to be 27.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il (R) looks at his youngest son Kim Jong-un as they watched a parade last year. Photo: Reuters

The news of the death of  "Dear Leader" was delivered by a weeping announcer in a broadcast at noon local time, Yonhap reported, citing North Korea's official media.

The official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said the leader ''passed away from a great mental and physical strain'' at 8.30am on Saturday (1030 AEDT Saturday), while on a train for one of his ''field guidance'' tours.

Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in August 2008 and may have also had pancreatic cancer, according to South Korean news reports.  KCNA said Kim died of a ''severe myocardial infarction along with a heart attack''. It said an autopsy was performed on Sunday.

 

Dear Leader ... Kim Jong-il Photo: Reuters

National mourning

His funeral will be held on December 28 in Pyongyang but no foreign delegations will be invited, KCNA said. A period of national mourning was declared from December 17 to 29.
The news came as North Korea prepared for a hereditary succession. Kim Jong-il inherited power after his father, revered North Korean founder Kim Il-sung, died in 1994.

In September 2010, Kim Jong-il declared his third son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor, putting him in high-ranking posts.

Flashback ... North Korean leader Kim Jong Il acknowledging applause from soldiers as he inspects the Korean People's Army Unit.

South Korea's military has been put on emergency alert following Kim's death, the Yonhap news agency reported, adding that South Korea's presidential Blue House had called an emergency National Security Council meeting.

'Chain-smoking recluse'

Kim was a chain-smoking recluse who ruled for 17 years after coming to power in July 1994 and resisted opening up to the outside world in order to protect his regime.

Flashback ... Pictures of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and his son Kim Jong-un burnt during anti-North Korea rally in Seoul. Photo: Reuters

He was born, according to his official biographers, in a mountain cabin in North Korea in February 1942, an occasion marked by a double rainbow and a bright star.

But other records said he was actually born in Siberia in 1941, the BBC reported. His father had been exiled to Siberia.
He was believed to be a fan of Hollywood movies and reportedly had a library of 20,000 films, the BBC said.

Click for more photos

The life and times of Kim Jong Il.

Kim Jong-Il on his luxury yacht soon after the death of his father. Photo: Kyodo

Other official reports about Kim included claims that he had shot 11 holes-in-one the first time he picked up a golf club, that he could alter the weather just using his mind and that he had started walking at three-weeks-old and talking at eight weeks, London's Daily Telegraph reported.

Kim's official biography said that in elementary school he showed his revolutionary spirit by leading marches to battlefields where Korean rebels fought against Japanese occupiers of the peninsula.

By the time he was in middle school he had shown himself to be an exemplary factory worker who could repair trucks and electric motors, the biography claimed.

He went to Kim Il-sung University where he studied the great works of communist thinkers as well as his father's revolutionary theory, in a systematic way, state propaganda said.

North Korea analysts said however, Kim lived a life of privilege in the capital, Pyongyang, when his family returned to the divided peninsula in 1945.

The Soviets later installed Kim Il-sung as the new leader of North Korea and the family lived in a Pyongyang mansion formerly occupied by a Japanese officer.

Kim Jong Il's younger brother mysteriously drowned in a pool at the residence in 1947.

Many of his younger years would have been spent in China receiving an education, analysts said.

Anointed successor

After graduating from college, Kim joined the ruling Worker's Party of Korea in 1964 and quickly rose through its ranks. By 1973, he was the party's secretary of organisation and propaganda, and in 1974 his father anointed him as his successor.

Kim gradually increased his power in domestic affairs over the following years and his control within the ruling party greatly increased when the younger Kim was given senior posts in the Politburo and Military Commission in 1980.

Intelligence experts say Kim ordered a 1983 bombing in Myanmar that killed 17 senior South Korean officials and the destruction of a Korean Air jetliner in 1987 that killed 115.

He is also suspected of devising plans to raise cash by kidnapping Japanese, dealing drugs through North Korean embassies and turning the country into a major producer of counterfeit currency.

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. Photo: Reuters >>

Kim was known as a womaniser, a drinker and a movie buff, according to those people who had been in close contact with him and later left the country. He was said to enjoy ogling Russian dancing girls, amassing a wine cellar with more than 10,000 bottles and downing massive amounts of lobster and cognac.

North Korea's propaganda machine painted a much more different picture.

It said Kim piloted jet fighters - even though he travelled by land for his infrequent trips abroad. He penned operas, had a photographic memory and produced movies, it was claimed.

When he first took power in 1994, many analysts thought Kim's term as North Korea's leader would be short-lived and powerful elements in the military would rise up to take control of the state.

The already anaemic economy was in a shambles due to the end of the Cold War and the loss of traditional trading partners. Poor harvests and floods led about one million people to die in a famine in the 1990s after he took power.

Despite the tenuous position from which he started, Kim managed to stay in power. He also installed economic reforms that were designed to bring a small and controlled amount of free-market economics into the state-planned economy.

Nuclear tests

Lampooned by foreign cartoonists and filmmakers for his weight, his zippered jumpsuits, his aviator sunglasses and his bouffant hairdo, Kim cut a more serious figure in his rare dealings with world leaders outside the Communist bloc.

''If there's no confrontation, there's no significance to weapons,'' he told Madeleine Albright, then US secretary of state, in a 2000 meeting in Pyongyang.

Those words took on greater significance in 2009 as Kim defied threats of United Nations sanctions to test a second nuclear device and a ballistic missile, technically capable of striking Alaska.

The following year North Korea lashed out militarily, prompting stern warnings from the US and South Korea.

An international investigation blamed Kim's regime for the March 2010 sinking of the South Korean naval vessel Cheonan that killed 46 sailors.

Eight months later North Korea shelled a South Korean island, killing two soldiers, two civilians and setting homes ablaze.

The act followed reports by an American scientist that the country had made ''stunning'' advances to its uranium-enrichment program.

Kim Jong Un: the new leader?

The potential succession of his little-known third son, Kim Jong Un, threatens to trigger a dangerous period for the Korean peninsula, where 1.7 million troops from the two Koreas and the US square off every day.

''Kim Jong Il inherited a genius for playing the weak hand and by keeping the major powers nervous, continuing his father's tradition of turning Korea's history of subservience on its head,'' said Michael Breen, the Seoul-based author of Kim Jong Il: North Korea's Dear Leader, a biography.

''We have entered an uncertain moment with North Korea.''

The death of the North Korean leader had created political uncertainty with the succession issue a "big question mark," according to Sandy Mehta, chief executive officer of Value Investment Principals Ltd, Bloomberg reported.

"We could see a lot of internal turmoil in North Korea," Mehta, based in Hong Kong, said in e-mailed comments.

"Long-term, with Kim Jong Il out of the picture, we could be looking at a more rational country, which would be positive for the Korean peninsula and the Asian region."

Professor Yang Moo Jin of the University of North Korean Studies told Reuters the "chances that the North Korean military is attempting a coup are very low because North Korea has called itself a nation sharing a common destiny with Kim Jong Un".

"I think the collective leadership of the party, government and military will go on for a while, because Kim Jong Un is still young.

"Now, South Korea urgently needs to think of who in North Korea it has to deal with. South Korea doesn't want any instability in North Korea so will probably work to expand its cooperation efforts."

Chung Young Tae of the Korea Institute of National Unification added that Kim's death was "somewhat expected".

"What happens from now is very important. Any prospect for a strong and prosperous country is now gone," he told Reuters.

"Kim Jong-un is not yet the official heir, but the regime will move in the direction of Kim Jong-un taking centre stage. There is a big possibility that a power struggle may happen. It's likely the military will support Kim Jong-un.

"Right now there will be control wielded over the people to keep them from descending into chaos in this tumultuous time."