Kim Jong Il

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the mercurial strongman who styled himself as a "Dear Leader" while ruling over an impoverished police state, died at 69, according to North Korean state media. Kim was believed to have suffered from multiple chronic illnesses, but his death -- reportedly from a heart attack while traveling by train Saturday morning -- was sudden. He had been grooming a son to succeed him, and his death creates uncertainty about the future direction of a nation with few international friends but a nuclear weapons capability.

The hard-to-predict and often-threatening plans of North Korea shadowed President Obama's nuclear security summit as soon as he arrived in Seoul, injecting a Cold War note to a meeting designed to deal with newer threats of terrorism and the spread of nuclear materials. The opening hours of the trip reprised similar journeys by his last two predecessors, reflecting the Korean peninsula's status as one of the last vestiges of what used to be a worldwide divide. Like Presidents George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, Obama traveled to the demilitarized zone that separates north and south, donning binoculars at a forward outpost only yards form the armistice line.

Lee Young-guk is a struggling duck breeder in muddy work clothes, shepherding 10,000 feathered wards at his rural family-owned spread near the North Korean border. For the taciturn 50-year-old, his omnipresent baseball cap worn low over watchful eyes, common farm life is a distant second act to the years when he enjoyed an intimate view of a bizarre lifestyle that, as he puts it, "few mortals ever witness. " For 10 years, until 1988, Lee was a personal bodyguard for Kim Jong Il, working among the phalanx of trained killers who protected the future North Korean dictator, infamous for, among other things, his fetishes for handguns, imported caviar and foreign-made limousines.

It was a bad year for the villains of the world. Three of the biggest bad guys met their ends: Osama bin Laden, killed by U.S. commandos who stormed his villa in Pakistan in May; Moammar Kadafi, killed by Libyan insurgents who captured him (with the help of a NATO airstrike) in October; and Kim Jong Il, the ruler of North Korea, who died Dec. 17, reportedly of a heart attack. Bin Laden was the most important. Americans remember him, of course, as the architect of the terrorist attacks of Sept.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il finally emerged late last month after reportedly suffering a major stroke six months ago. Although dispelling one rumor -- he didn't die -- his appearance did nothing to stop speculation about his health and who will succeed him. The temptation is to wait and see, but this would be unwise. The United States and its Asian allies must prepare for the possibility that the leadership of North Korea may change sooner rather than later, and not necessarily smoothly.

On a snowy, overcast day, North Korea bid farewell to "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il and ushered in a new era of leadership Wednesday under his chosen successor and youngest son. But as so often happens with the secretive state, the funeral services were kept largely away from the prying eyes of foreigners. How the son handles himself will provide a signal of his capabilities to lead North Korea. His goal will be to show that order has been maintained and that the affairs of state go on, experts say. PHOTOS: World reaction to Kim Jong Il's death North Korea's government-controlled media have in recent days bestowed numerous titles on Kim Jong Un, an apparent paving of the way for his assuming command.

North Korea's state news agency reported a public appearance by reclusive leader Kim Jong Il for the first time in nearly two months, an absence that prompted speculation he was seriously ill. Kim watched a university soccer game, the state-run Korean Central News Agency reported Saturday. It did not mention his health or when he made the appearance. The 66-year-old leader had not been seen in public since mid-August. U.S.

AFTER FOUR YEARS of bluster and buildup, North Korea has finally reached the nuclear finish line. On Tuesday, it announced its intention to step across. At every point along the way, Pyongyang has telegraphed its intentions, first announcing that it would withdraw from the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and reprocess plutonium, then declaring that it already possessed a "deterrent force" and now, for the first time, proclaiming that it will conduct a weapons test.

He rarely leaves his secure confines in Pyongyang, but Asian news reports cite signs that reclusive North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il is preparing for a trip to Beijing. Kim, who is believed to have traveled to China four times since 2000, two of them in the month of January, could be ready to announce his nation's return to the six-party nuclear disarmament talks, some analysts say. North Korea's desperate economy, weakened by international sanctions after Pyongyang's nuclear and missile tests last year, could force Kim back to the bargaining table in the hopes of extracting food and financial aid. Kim's previous trips abroad have signaled new business ventures or a renewed push for nuclear talks.

In a likely prelude to leader Kim Jong Il's rise to the president's office, North Koreans elected him and hundreds of others to the country's parliament. Less than an hour after voting ended, the country's official news agency announced Kim's election. Since the 1994 death of his father, Kim Il Sung, the 56-year-old son has been running the Communist country as supreme military commander and head of the ruling Workers' Party.

On a snowy, overcast day, North Korea bid farewell to "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il and ushered in a new era of leadership Wednesday under his chosen successor and youngest son. But as so often happens with the secretive state, the funeral services were kept largely away from the prying eyes of foreigners. How the son handles himself will provide a signal of his capabilities to lead North Korea. His goal will be to show that order has been maintained and that the affairs of state go on, experts say. PHOTOS: World reaction to Kim Jong Il's death North Korea's government-controlled media have in recent days bestowed numerous titles on Kim Jong Un, an apparent paving of the way for his assuming command.

In 1967, Kim Young-soon was a dancer in Pyongyang, North Korea, when her best friend visited with crazy news. "I'm going to live in the 5th House," announced Sung Hye Rim, then a noted North Korean actress, Kim recalled. She was referring to the residence of Kim Jong Il, the crown prince of the Hermit Kingdom, leader in waiting behind his powerful father, Kim Il Sung. To Kim Young-soon, the sudden romance seemed like some perverse fairy tale with little chance of a happy ending. Worse, the actress was already married.

For the Chinese government, a dead Kim Jong Il is a popular Kim Jong Il. In life, the North Korea leader was a constant irritant to Beijing with his dangerous nuclear ambitions and his stubborn refusal to reform an economy that left the population starving. Although Chinese officials rarely criticize North Korea openly, they quietly suspended energy assistance and demanded cash in advance for sales at times when they were angry about the nuclear program. They sometimes have been stingy with food aid and have said publicly that North Korea needs to overhaul its economy.

The career of Kim Jong Il, North Korea's "Dear Leader," was marked by a series of historical firsts — most of them dubious at best. He was, to begin, the first ruler of a Marxist-Leninist state to inherit absolute power through hereditary succession from his father, "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung, founder of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, or DPRK. He was also the first ruler of an urbanized, literate society to preside over a mass famine in peacetime: The Great North Korean Famine of the 1990s, which erupted shortly after his father's death, is believed to have killed hundreds of thousands of his subjects, and perhaps more.

Chu Sung-ha says he knows for sure that some of the people shown sobbing on television over the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il are faking it. Once, he was one of them. As a 20-year-old student at Pyongyang's prestigious Kim Il Sung University in 1994, when North Korea's founder and the school's namesake died, Chu and his fellow students were used to illustrate the nation's grief. Television cameras were rolling when the students were ushered into an auditorium to be told the news.

Choices on the menu Re "School menu fails student test," Dec. 18 The failure of the new school lunch menus again proves that no matter how much the do-gooders in government wish it were different, they can't and shouldn't try to dictate taste and behavior. Whether it is the food we eat, the light bulbs we use, the mileage of the car we buy, the decision to gamble on the Internet or with whom we choose to be intimate — stay out of our lives. John Piccininni Newport Beach I read this article with skepticism.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il pledged to keep a moratorium on missile tests until 2003, but he said there would be no inter-Korean summit as long as the U.S. is reviewing its policy toward the North, a European delegation said Thursday. The promise to adhere to the moratorium was significant progress in a process that has stalled amid U.S.-North Korean tension. Earlier this year, North Korea threatened to end the moratorium on long-range missile tests.

According to his obituary in The Times, North Korean strongman Kim Jong Il hired a personal sushi chef from Tokyo and a personal pizza chef from Italy even as his country suffered through a famine that killed as many as 2 million of his people. He kept a library of 20,000 movies for his own entertainment although ordinary citizens could be sent to prison camps for watching South Korean or American movies. He beat back economic reforms and led North Korea's economy to the brink of collapse while building a nuclear weapons program opposed by the rest of the world.

The sudden death of Kim Jong Il is forcing North Korea's prosperous southern neighbor to confront a class divide deep in its midst. People like Son Jeong Hun, a defector from the north struggling to fit in amid modern, bustling Seoul, hope the dictator's demise signals a light at the end of the tunnel for their backward homeland. Others such as South Korean-born Kim Chi-guk, who sells imported chocolate at an exclusive department store, are afraid a train is barreling straight for them — maybe bristling with weapons, maybe jammed with millions of unwashed cousins who will cost them a lot of money.