North Korean Mourners Line Streets for Kim Jong-il’s Funeral

In an image made from KRT television, a hearse carried Kim Jong-il during a funeral procession in Pyongyang, North Korea on Wednesday. (KRT, via Associated Press)

The photo is displayed in case you can't tell who the deceased is:

A portrait of Kim Jong-Il was seen at his funeral procession in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this image made from KRT television on Wednesday. (KRT, via Associated Press)

December 28, 2011
By CHOE SANG-HUN
The New York Times

SEOUL, South Korea — Kim Jong-un, the designated successor to the socialist throne in Pyongyang, North Korea, bid farewell on Wednesday to his deceased father, Kim Jong-il, walking along his hearse through snow-covered downtown Pyongyang in an extensive funeral closely watched for early glimpses of who’s rising and who’s fading under the young untested leader.

Neat rows of soldiers stood bowing in front of the Kumsusan mausoleum, where Kim Jong-il’s body had been lying in state since his death was announced on Dec. 19.

When the funeral motorcade stopped before them, they gave a last salute, and then a military band played the national anthem. North Korea’s Central TV also showed crowds of people wildly crying along snowy streets, the route of the funeral procession.

A car with a large portrait of Kim Jong-il on its roof led the motorcade, followed by the hearse bearing his coffin draped with a red flag. A phalanx of soldiers carrying various party and military flags followed.

Kim Jong-il, who suffered a stroke in 2008, died of a heart attack on Dec. 17. He left behind a country gripped by chronic food shortages but armed with nuclear weapons and a dynastic successor in his 20s whose control on military generals and party secretaries remains a subject of intense speculation among outside analysts.

In the past week, the regime has moved briskly to rally the key agencies of power behind Mr. Kim. When he visited his father at the Kumsusan mausoleum for the fifth time on Tuesday, the North Korean media referred to him as the “sagacious leader of our party, state and military.”

Wednesday’s events were seen by many analysts as a continuation of cementing the leadership of Kim Jong-un. Speaking on the BBC, the journalist and author Michael Breen noted that Wednesday’s televised images had shown Kim Jong-un standing next to his relatives, with top military leaders nearby.

Those images followed carefully orchestrated reports last weekend that included North Korea’s state-run media publishing an entreaty to Kim Jong-un to become “supreme commander” of the military. That official plea, along with the television footage of the generals and Jang Song-taek, Mr. Kim’s uncle and a vice chairman of the powerful National Defense Commission, in a military uniform, signals that the military is spearheading Kim Jong-il’s succession.

“This is the structure that is running the country,” Mr. Breen said. “They will be very much telling him what to do, what policies to follow. He will be following them for quite a while.”

On Tuesday, Pyongyang said it wanted to restore scuttled agreements with South Korea that could channel extensive investments from the developed South into the impoverished North. But it was unclear whether North Korea was prepared to offer any concessions in return for restoring those agreements, which the South Korean leader, Lee Myung-bak, scrapped when he came to power nearly four years ago.

Kim Yong-nam, president of the North Korean Parliament and a ceremonial head of state, expressed the request when he met with Lee Hee-ho, the widow of former President Kim Dae-jung of South Korea, according to Ms. Lee’s spokesman.

Ms. Lee’s 13-member delegation returned home on Tuesday after visiting Pyongyang, where she expressed condolences to Kim Jong-un. Members of her delegation and one led by Hyun Jeong-eun, chairwoman of Hyundai Asan, a company that has business ties with North Korea, were the first South Koreans to meet with Kim Jong-un and other North Korean leaders since his father’s death.