North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il dead at 69

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, revered at home by a propaganda machine that turned him into a demi-god and vilified in the West as a temperamental tyrant with a nuclear arsenal, has died, North Korean state television reported today.

Kim, who was 69 years old, died on Saturday, it said.

Kim was the unchallenged head of the reclusive state whose economy fell deeper into poverty during his years in power as he
vexed the world by developing a nuclear arms programme and an arsenal of missiles aimed to hit neighbours Japan and South
Korea.

Kim had been portrayed as a criminal mastermind behind deadly bombings, a jovial dinner host, a comic buffoon in Hollywood movies and by the administration of former US President George W Bush as the ruler of "an outpost of tyranny".

He was thought to have suffered a stroke in August 2008.

Known at home as "the Dear Leader", Kim took over North Korea in 1994 when his father and founder of the reclusive state
Kim Il-sung, known as "the Great Leader", died.

Kim Jong-il, famed for his bouffant hair-do, platform shoes and jump suits, slowly emerged from his father's shadows to
become one of the world's most enigmatic leaders who put North Korea on the path of becoming a nuclear power.

His state was also frequently cited as a threat to global stability.
     
Despite being on the world stage longer than most world leaders, little was known about Kim. He rarely spoke in public, almost never travelled abroad and has an official biography that is steeped in propaganda but lacking in concrete substance.

Kim had a host of titles in North Korea, but president was not one of them. Kim Il-sung was given the posthumous title of president for life, while his son's most powerful posts included the chairman of the National Defence Commission, the real centre of power in North Korea, and Supreme Commander of the Korea People's Army.

North Korean propaganda said Kim Jong-il was born on Feb 16, 1942, at a secret camp for rebel fighters led by his father near Korea's famed Mount Paektu.

But analysts say he was likely born in the Soviet Union when his father was with other Korean communist exiles receiving military and other training.

His 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.

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.

Kim likely spent many of his younger years in China to receive an education and to keep him safe during the 1950-1953 Korean War, analysts said.


- Reuters