Kim Jong-il, Leader of North Korea, Is Dead
Kim Jong-il, the reclusive dictator who kept North Korea at the edge of
starvation and collapse, banished to gulags citizens deemed disloyal and turned
the country into a nuclear weapons state, died Saturday, according to North
Korean state news media.
Called the “Dear Leader” by his people, Mr. Kim, the son of North Korea’s
founder, remained an unknowable figure. Everything about him was guesswork, from
the exact date and place of his birth to the cause of his death to the
mythologized events of his rise in a country formed by the hasty division of the
Korean Peninsula at the end of World War II.
North Koreans heard about him only as their “peerless leader” and “the great
successor to the revolutionary cause.” Yet he fostered what was perhaps the last
personality cult in the Communist world. His portrait hangs beside that of his
father, Kim Il-sung, in every North Korean household and building. Towers,
banners and even rock faces across the country bear slogans praising him.
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