North Korea Heir on display in Pyongyang

Kim Jong-un, in dark suit, the third son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. (Photo: Yao Dawei/Xinhua, via Associated Press)

Kim Jong-il’s Heir Attends Parade

October 9, 2010
By MARK McDONALD
New York Times

SEOUL, South Korea — The North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, attended a massive military parade with his youngest son and designated successor on Sunday as the ruling Communist regime celebrated the 65th founding of its Workers’ Party.

The son, Kim Jong-un, wearing a dark suit despite his recent promotion to four-star general, watched the festivities and reviewed squads of goose-stepping troops with his 68-year-old father and other senior politicians and generals. The event was held in Kim Il-sung Square, named for Kim Jong-un’s grandfather, the founder of the North Korean state.

Video footage from the celebration in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, showed tens of thousands of performers and soldiers arrayed in what was said to be the largest such event in the country’s history. For the first time, a few dozen Western media organizations, including some American outlets, were allowed to attend the festivities and report live from the square.

The elder Mr. Kim, who is said to be in poor health after apparently suffering a stroke in 2008, has hurried the succession of Kim Jong-un in recent weeks. At a landmark Workers’ Party meeting last month, Kim Jong-un was made a general and received two significant positions in the party.

Other members of the Kim family and the leader’s inner circle also received new posts and promotions as the leadership hierarchy was reshuffled to provide Kim Jong-un with mentors and supporters as he solidifies his power.

Little is known about Kim Jong-un, who is believed to be 27 or 28. He is the youngest of Mr. Kim’s three sons — the older brothers were uninterested or deemed incapable of leadership — and he attended school for a time in Bern, Switzerland. He is known to speak some English, and he likely speaks German as well. Until last month’s party meeting, very few pictures of him had been seen in public.

The Workers’ Party anniversary is typically a major national holiday in North Korea, with citizens receiving food handouts from the government. The theme of the celebration Sunday was heavily military, befitting Kim Jong-il’s guiding philosophy of songun, or military first. Nuclear-armed North Korea has a huge standing army, with 1.2 million soldiers, and its border with South Korea is one of the world’s most heavily militarized.

There was no immediate reaction from the South Korean government to Sunday’s parade in the North, but the conservative administration of President Lee Myung-bak has taken a hard line against North Korea, and relations between the two countries remain strained. The South blames a North Korean torpedo attack for the sinking of one of its naval vessels, the Cheonan, an incident in March that killed 46 sailors. The North has denied any role in the sinking.