Kim Il Sung

North Korea said Friday that longtime President Kim Il Sung will visit China soon for a summit between leaders of two of the last remaining hard-line Communist countries.

Contrary to the adage, what we don't know about North Korea could hurt us. It's not known whether the intermediate-range Musudan missiles poised for imminent firing could reach U.S. bases on Guam or Japan, though at least the latter is thought to be likely. Neither do the geopolitical experts who track every inscrutable move of the hermit country know if a missile launch would be meant to salute late North Korean founder Kim Il Sung on his 101st birthday Monday or to demonstrate that Pyongyang has the power to instigate a nuclear conflagration.

Police raided a publishing house Sunday and seized 15,000 copies of a North Korean autobiography of Kim Il Sung, part of a crackdown in the wake of the communist strongman's death last month. Police said they were looking for Lee Hee Kun, 33, president of the Kasowon publishing company, on charges of attempting to publish the four-volume autobiography in South Korea. Publishing materials from North Korea without government permission is illegal in South Korea.

Seamen who bravely go down with their ship can attain glory in any nation, but in North Korea, hero status also comes to seafarers who die while trying to preserve images of the Dear Leader. On Friday, the autocratic state offered posthumous awards to crew members who drowned while reportedly attempting to save portraits of leader Kim Jong Il and his late father, Kim Il Sung, as a cargo ship sank in frigid water off the Chinese coast in November. North Korean state news media announced that the captain and chief engineer of the Jisong 5 were proclaimed labor heroes for their valor.

North Korea's "Great Leader," Kim Il Sung, began a new four-year presidential term Thursday, defiantly lauding communism as he kept his iron grip on power. Kim, now 78 and the world's longest surviving autocratic ruler, quashed speculation that after 42 years at the top, he was ready to hand over power to his son. The son, Kim Jong Il, 48, has long been groomed to take over in what would be the Communist world's first dynastic succession.

Authorities in South Korea reported today that North Korean loudspeakers at the demilitarized zone said North Korean President Kim Il Sung had been killed. But the North Korean Embassy here and Peking diplomats said they had no confirmation of the report.

He is pictured on giant murals throughout town, memorialized with monuments and statues, his image pinned to the lapels of virtually every Pyongyang citizen. His picture is in every public building; special bookstores stock volumes of his reminiscences and political "guidance" in Korean, English, Russian, Chinese, Japanese and French.

In the last few months officials from North and South Korea have met on more amicable terms than at any other time since their country was divided at the beginning of the Cold War in 1945. But this modest if welcome improvement in the political atmosphere has yet to translate into normal relations or a formal peace to replace the military armistice that ended the Korean War 39 years ago. Tantalizing gestures from the north have yet to be matched by tangible deeds.

Suspicion and fear of war returned to South Korea on Saturday as President Kim Young Sam put his nation's armed forces on alert immediately after hearing of the death of North Korean leader Kim Il Sung. Daily life in both Seoul and the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, remained normal, however, and officials of the United States, which maintains 37,000 troops in South Korea, said no signs of military movements had emerged and that American forces were not on alert.

Kim Il Sung, the Communist dictator who ruled North Korea for more than four decades and pushed the isolated regime to the brink of nuclear confrontation with the world, died of a heart attack Friday at age 82, Radio Pyongyang reported today. Kim, the world's longest-ruling Communist leader and the object of a slavish personality cult, collapsed Thursday just a few weeks before a historic meeting with South Korean President Kim Young Sam aimed at easing the mounting nuclear tensions.

THERE'S not a lot to do when you're a closely watched visitor in North Korea except hit the karaoke at day's end, so we're at it again. From the sound of it, most North Korean karaoke falls into two categories. Soupy ballads about national glory, superior leadership, glorious workers. And hard-driving martial tunes urging citizens to think as one and pick up a bayonet. Rounding out the experience are video clips of goose-stepping soldiers and ozone-piercing missiles.

Kim Jong Il is neither insane nor stupid. From the CIA's psychological profilers to his many biographers, experts who have studied the North Korean leader believe that beneath the glaring eccentricities -- the bouffant hairdo and the oddball Mao suits -- there is a shrewd operator at work. Despite an image as a "nut with a nuke," as some bloggers have disparaged him, the 64-year-old Kim appears to have carefully orchestrated his country's path to nuclear sovereignty.

Most people receive a few gifts for their birthday. Maybe a dozen if it's a big one. But a thousand? Such outpourings for "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il and his late father, "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung, are evidence of the love and respect they engender the world over, our omnipresent North Korean guides inform us. In fact, the elder Kim is so beloved that the gifts still pour in 11 years after his death.

WHEN it comes to paying tribute to the ruling Kim family in North Korea, size matters. Check out the towering bronze memorial to founding father Kim Il Sung on Mansu Hill overlooking the capital, Pyongyang -- a skyscraper of a statue. Or the Arch of Triumph built to commemorate Kim's return from exile. A replica of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, the North Korean version rises, crucially, 39 feet higher than the original.

They were bootblacks, hobos, acrobats -- 31 ex-cons and ruffians plucked out of prison or off the streets and offered one last chance for redemption: to sneak into North Korea and kill its president, Kim Il Sung. But nothing went according to plan. Their mission aborted, they ended up killing their trainers, fighting their way into the South Korean capital and blowing themselves up.

North Korea has appointed Vice Marshal Kim Il Chol as first vice defense minister, a post left vacant by the death of Kim Kwang Jin in February, a senior South Korean government official said. But the Stalinist state has yet to appoint a defense minister to succeed Choe Kwang, who also died in February, said Park Sung Hoon, a director general at the South's National Unification Ministry. Park said Kim Il Chol was one of four generals promoted to vice marshal Sunday.

CIA Director Robert Gates recently warned in testimony before Congress that North Korea might be only months away from producing a nuclear weapon. April 15 is the 80th birthday of North Korea's "Great Leader," Kim Il Sung. On previous birthdays ending in round numbers or in fives, the Great Leader has been the recipient of some lavish presents. Perhaps this year he will receive a nuclear bomb.

In North Korea, the sacred Mt. Paekdu mourned for Kim Il Sung, the dictator who ruled the country from 1948 until he died July 8. A double rainbow signaled his death. Paying tribute, swallows hovered above statues of him scattered throughout the country.

With revolutionary opera booming from the speakers in the Kim Il Sung Stadium, thousands of 6-year-olds performed synchronized splits, cartwheels and back flips in perfect formation. When the music stopped, the children shouted, "We miss the smile of the Great Leader," and began crying. The crowd of 100,000 North Koreans applauded loudly as the youngsters raced from the field, wiping tears from their cheeks.

North Korean Defense Minister O Jin U, the No. 2 man in the country's ruling hierarchy, died early today of cancer at the age of 78, the official Korean Central News Agency reported. KCNA, monitored in Tokyo, said that O, a marshal of the Korean People's Army, died after a long illness from cancer. He had spent nearly six weeks late last year at Laennec Hospital in Paris for treatment of lung cancer.