Korean dictator Kim Jong Il dies

PYONGYANG, North Korea – Even as the world changed around him, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il remained firmly in control, ruling absolutely at home and keeping the rest of the world on edge through a nuclear weapons program.

Inheriting power from his father, he led his country through a devastating famine while frustrating the U.S. and other global powers with an on-again, off-again approach to talks on giving up nuclear weapons in return for food and other assistance. Kim was one of the last remnants of a Cold War era that ended years earlier in most other parts of the world.

His death after 17 years in power was announced today by state television from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. The country’s “Dear Leader” – who reputedly had a taste for cigars, cognac and gourmet cuisine – was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease. He was 69.

North Korea has been grooming Kim’s third son to take over power from his father in the impoverished nation that celebrates the ruling family with an intense cult of personality.

Kim’s longtime pursuit of nuclear weapons and his military’s repeated threats to South Korea and the U.S. have stoked fears that war might again break out or that North Korea might provide weapons of mass destruction to terrorist movements.

South Korea put its military on “high alert” and President Lee Myung-bak convened a national security council meeting after the news of Kim’s death. The Korean peninsula remains technically in a state of war more than 50 years after the Cold War-era armed conflict ended in a cease-fire.

The Obama administration warily watched developments on the Korean peninsula, and officials said Sunday the U.S. may postpone decisions on re-engaging the reclusive country in nuclear talks and providing it with food aid.

The administration had been expected to decide on both issues this week, possibly as early as today, but the officials said Kim’s death would likely delay the process. They said the U.S. was particularly concerned about any changes that Kim’s death might spark in the military postures of North and South Korea but were hopeful that calm would prevail.

Kim’s death was announced by state media in a “special broadcast” from Pyongyang. The report said Kim died of a heart ailment on a train due to a “great mental and physical strain” on Saturday during a “high intensity field inspection.” North Korea will hold a national mourning period until Dec. 29. Kim’s funeral will be held on Dec. 28, it said.

The U.S. officials stressed that North Korea’s past behavior has been notoriously erratic, making predictions about its intentions difficult. However, they said they believed there would not be significant changes in North Korean policies under Kim’s son and heir apparent Kim Jong Un until at least after the mourning period ends.

Asian stock markets moved lower amid the news, which raises the possibility of increased instability on the divided Korean peninsula.

South Korea’s Kospi index was down 3.9 percent at 1,767.89 and Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell 0.8 percent to 8,331. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 2 percent to 17,929.66 and the Shanghai Composite Index dropped 2 percent to 2,178.75.

A South Korean Foreign Ministry official, speaking on the condition of anonymity because the ministry was debating ways to respond to Kim’s death, said diplomats are shocked but are trying to assess the situation as best as they can.

The North’s official Korean Central News Agency urged its 24 million people to rally behind 20-something heir-apparent Kim Jong Un as the nation mourned the leader’s death.

The news agency said the country, people and military “must faithfully revere respectable comrade Kim Jong Un.”

“At the leadership of comrade Kim Jong Un, we have to change sadness to strength and courage and overcome today’s difficulties,” it said.

Kim Jong Il is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but he had appeared relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state media.

Kim inherited power after his father, revered North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, died in 1994. He had been groomed for 20 years to lead the communist nation founded by his guerrilla fighter-turned-politician father and built according to the principle of “juche,” or self-reliance.

In September 2010, Kim Jong Il revealed that his third son, Kim Jong Un, would be his successor, putting him in high-ranking posts.

Even with a successor, there had been some fear among North Korean observers of a behind-the-scenes power struggle or nuclear instability upon the elder Kim’s death.

Few firm facts are available when it comes to North Korea, one of the most isolated countries in the world, and not much is clear about the “Dear Leader.”

North Korean legend has it that Kim was born on Mount Paektu, one of Korea’s most cherished sites, in 1942, a birth heralded in the heavens by a pair of rainbows and a brilliant new star. Soviet records, however, indicate he was born in Siberia, in 1941.

Kim Il Sung, who for years fought for independence from Korea’s colonial ruler, Japan, from a base in Russia, emerged as a communist leader after returning to Korea in 1945 after Japan was defeated in World War II.

With the peninsula divided between the Soviet-administered north and the U.S.-administered south, Kim rose to power as North Korea’s first leader in 1948 while Syngman Rhee became South Korea’s first president.

The North invaded the South in 1950, sparking a war that would last three years, kill millions of civilians and leave the peninsula divided by a Demilitarized Zone that today remains one of the world’s most heavily fortified.

In the North, Kim Il Sung meshed Stalinist ideology with a cult of personality that encompassed him and his son. Their portraits hang in every building in North Korea and on the lapels of every dutiful North Korean.

Kim Jong Il, a graduate of Pyongyang’s Kim Il Sung University, was 33 when his father anointed him his eventual successor.

Even before he took over as leader, there were signs the younger Kim would maintain – and perhaps exceed – his father’s hard-line stance.

Kim Jong Il took over after his father died in 1994, eventually taking the posts of chairman of the National Defense Commission, commander of the Korean People’s Army and head of the ruling Worker’s Party while his father remained as North Korea’s “eternal president.”