NKorea says ‘historic’ political gathering has begun in Pyongyang

Historic political meeting under way in NKorea

SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea’s Kim Jong Il made his youngest son a four-star general, giving the 28-year-old his first known official title in a promotion seen Tuesday as confirmation that he is slated to become the country’s next leader.

The announcement was made hours before a historic Workers’ Party meeting where Kim, now 68 and apparently in deteriorating health, was expected to grant his son, Kim Jong Un, and other family members top party posts as part of plans to take the communist dynasty into a third generation.

The dispatch on North Korean state media early Tuesday about Kim Jong Un’s promotion as army general was widely seen as confirmation that those plans are under way.

The question of who will take over from the authoritarian leader is important to regional security because of North Korea’s active nuclear and missile programs and concerns of chaos in the case of upheaval in the impoverished country.

Very little is known about Kim Jong Un, who was schooled in Switzerland and educated at Kim Il Sung Military University in Pyongyang. There are no known photos of him as an adult.

The much-delayed Workers’ Party gathering in Pyongyang was the communist nation’s biggest political meeting since leader Kim Jong Il made his own public debut in 1980, and keen attention was focused on the event for further signs of key appointments for Kim Jong Un.

In a brief announcement Tuesday, state TV announced that “crucial developments” were taking place at the convention to elect top party leadership, and that Kim Jong Il was re-elected to the party’s top position of general secretary.

“His re-election is an expression of absolute support and trust of all the party members, the servicepersons and the people in Kim Jong Il,” the official Korean Central News Agency said.

The meeting was convened “at a historic time,” it said, providing no further details about the convention.

There was no mention of his son and no indication whether he would make an appearance at the conference, but observers predicted the son would win key party posts as part of the succession process.

“Kim Jong Un’s promotion is the starting point for his formal succession to power,” said Kim Yong-hyun, a North Korea expert at Seoul’s Dongguk University.

The secrecy surrounding the latest succession is reminiscent of Kim Jong Il’s own rise to power.

Kim Jong Il was 31 when he won the No. 2 post in the ruling Workers’ Party in 1973, an appointment seen as a key step in the path to succeeding his father.

The following year, Kim was formally tapped as the future leader but state media did not reveal that to the outside world until the landmark 1980 convention, the last big political meeting in North Korea.

He took over as leader in 1994 when his father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, died of heart failure in what was communism’s first hereditary succession.

Also promoted to general was Kim Kyong Hui, Kim Jong Il’s sister. Her name was listed ahead of Kim Jong Un’s in the KCNA report.

With Kim Jong Un still in his 20s and inexperienced, the 64-year-old sister may be tapped to oversee a transfer of power if the leader dies before the son is ready to take over, experts say.

“There is a possibility that she could play the role of a coordinator to make sure the power succession goes smoothly,” said Cheong Seong-chang, a senior fellow at the Sejong Institute think tank near Seoul.

She and her husband, Jang Song Thaek, who is vice chairman of the all-powerful National Defense Commission, are likely to act as guardians for the young Kim during his rise to power, analysts said.

The question of who will take over from the authoritarian leader is important to regional security because of North Korea’s active nuclear and missile programs and concerns of chaos in the case of upheaval in the impoverished country.

The two Koreas remain at war and divided by a heavily fortified border because their three-year conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953.