Kim Jong Il Dead

Kim Jong Il, the former second-generation dictator of North Korea, died Saturday of heart failure.  He was the General Secretary of the only political party in Korea, Chairman of National Defense, and Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army.  Since July 1994, he was without question the most powerful man in North Korea. 

In all likelihood, his unknown third son Jong Un will succeed him as the leader of a country that recently acquired nuclear weapons.  The North Korean economy is among the worst in the world, less than three percent the size of its southern counterpart.  The United Nations and United States have imposed economic sanctions as a result of North Korea’s refusal to abandon its nuclear weapon developments.  In 2009, Kim Jong Il oversaw the testing of a nuclear device and a ballistic missile capable of striking Tokyo.  In 2010, North Korea attacked South Korean naval vessels and shelled South Korean islands, killing soldiers and civilians. 

Last year, Kim Jong Il finalized his succession plan for his son Kim Jong Un to take over.  Jong Un stood at his father’s right side during a military parade the next month, wearing a black suit with a mandarin collar similar to the style worn by his grandfather, the founder of North Korea after World War II.  

Since 1994, Kim Jong Ill and his government created a cult of personality to the nation’s 24 million citizens.  The average income of North Koreans is less than a dollar a day, but they adored their “Dear Leader”.  Yet by most accounts, the early life of the future dictator was anything but grand.  After the elder Kim took power in 1948, Kim Jong Ill’s younger brother drowned and his mother died.  His father remarried and the boy fought often with his stepmother and half-brothers.  By the time he graduated from a university named after his father, he had developed a reputation as a impulsive womanizer who loved fast cars.  

Until the early 1970s, North Korea’s communist economy performed well relative to the capitalist system adopted by rival South Korea.  However, early in Kim’s reign, South Korea’s economy flourished while North Korea remained hesitant to open the country to the open market.  Kim consistently ignored advice to open the nation to tourism, citing the concern that tourists would be able to identify North Korea’s defense system.  When Kim took power in 1994, Russia and other communist countries on the Eastern European bloc had shed communism and no longer sent foreign aid to Kim’s government.  That meant China was the remaining source of international commerce, accounting for 83% of North Korea’s foreign trade operations in 2010 according to the Seoul-based Korea Trade and Investment Promotion Agency.