NKorean leader’s son is ‘Brilliant Comrade’
By VIJAY JOSHI
SEOUL, South Korea (AP) — The youngest son of North Korea’s authoritarian leader has been given the title of “Brilliant Comrade,” a sign the communist regime is preparing the 26-year-old to succeed the ailing Kim Jong Il, a newspaper reported.
The report came Friday as the U.N. Security Council approved new sanctions against North Korea for its recent nuclear test. There was no immediate reaction from Pyongyang, which has repeatedly warned it would view new sanctions as a declaration of war. South Korea welcomed the sanctions Saturday.
U.S. and South Korean intelligence authorities disclosed during a meeting this week that Kim Jong Un is now being referred to in the secretive regime as “Yongmyong-han Dongji,” which translates roughly as “Brilliant Comrade,” South Korea’s mass-circulation JoongAng Ilbo newspaper reported Friday.
An unidentified intelligence official quoted by the newspaper said the title means the North will engineer a cult of personality for the younger Kim — much like it was done for his father and grandfather, Kim Il Sung, the only two leaders North Korea has known.
The eldest Kim founded North Korea in 1948 in the aftermath of World War II when the peninsula was divided between the Soviet Union-controlled north and the U.S.-backed south.
Flip back through our entries on the North Korean issue…
The only known image of Kim Jong-un shows him as a young boy. Kim Jong-un is youngest son of Kim Jong-il and his late third wife Ko Yong-hui.
Watch for Kim Jong-il to create a ‘defining moment’ to mark his youngest son’s anticipated ascendancy. It’s quite possible that the DPRK’s current missile and nuclear disputes with the UN Security Council and the IAEA will serve as a backdrop for showcasing the 26-year old Jong-un, whose mother used to call him her “Morning Star King”. Amateur eschatologists will be spinning some yarns about this moniker, which has been used at various times to describe Jesus, Satan or the planet Venus.
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