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Kim Jong-il, the "dear leader" still venerated by many in North Korea but reviled abroad, has died aged 69, state media announced on Monday morning.

The North Korean leader suffered a heart attack on Saturday due to physical and mental over-work, the official KCNA news agency reported. He was on his train, travelling to offer "field guidance" to workers, when he died.

KCNA urged the nation, people and military to rally behind his young son and heir apparent, telling them they must "faithfully revere" Kim Jong-un's leadership.

Kim had recovered from a reported stroke in 2008, and Monday's announcement was unexpected. But he had already begun grooming Kim Jong-un to take control of the "hermit state", appointing him a general last year and giving him several high profile roles.

Experts say there is increasing cynicism in North Korea about the regime, which exerts rigid political control but has proved incapable of meeting basic economic needs. But people in the streets of Pyongyang burst into tears as they learnt of Kim's death, Associated Press reported.

"It is the biggest loss for the party ... and it is our people and nation's biggest sadness," a tearful anchorwoman clad in black Korean traditional dress told viewers as she announced Kim's death.

She urged the nation to "change our sadness to strength and overcome our difficulties."

The death will also be felt far beyond North Korea's 24 million population. The country has long been a source of international concern because of its nuclear and missiles programmes and there will be widespread anxiety about potential instability and the implications of the change in leadership.

Seoul's Yonhap news agency said South Korean military leaders had declared an emergency alert following Kim's death. A spokesman for Japanese prime minister Yoshihiko Noda said he had set up a crisis management team on North Korea, while in the US the White House said Barack Obama was monitoring reports of the death.

"We remain committed to stability on the Korean peninsula, and to the freedom and security of our allies," a spokesman added.

While there were some suggestions the new leader might sabre-rattle in the region to help establish himself, Dr Leonid Petrov of the University of Sydney argued that Pyongyang was likely to use the transition as an opportunity to reach out to the international community.

"They will try to use it to resume negotiations with the US, saying there is a new leader so why not go and talk," he predicted.

Kim Jong-un's name headed the long list of officials on the funeral committee, indicating he will lead it. KCNA said the funeral will take place in Pyongyang on 28 December, with the mourning period lasting until 29 December.

But there have long been doubts about how easy it will be for the younger man - thought to be in his late 20s - to continue the Communist dynasty founded by his grandfather Kim Il-sung, who died in 1994.

"I think the North has done quite a bit to accelerate the succession process so I think at least in the short term they will coalesce around the next generation of leadership and watch and see whether his son will be able to consolidate power. But there will be a lot of uncertainty ahead," said Daniel Pinkston of the International Crisis Group.

Chung Young-tae, of the Korea Institute of National Unification, told Reuters: "Any prospect for a strong and prosperous country is now gone. Kim Jong-un is not yet the official heir, but the regime will move in the direction of Kim Jong-un taking centre stage.

"There is a big possibility that a power struggle may happen. It's likely the military will support Kim Jong-un. Right now there will be control wielded over the people to keep them from descending into chaos in this tumultuous time."

KCNA said that Kim had been receiving treatment for heart disease for a long time. He suffered a major heart attack on Saturday due to "great mental and physical strain caused by his uninterrupted field guidance tour for the building of a thriving nation" while travelling on his train.

"Every possible first-aid measure was taken immediately but he passed away at 08:30," it said, adding that an autopsy had confirmed the diagnosis.

The last public sighting of Kim was reported by North Korea's state news agency on Thursday. He reportedly visited a supermarket and music centre, accompanied by his son.

The news is likely to be a particular shock in North Korea - where Kim has been revered as much as he has been vilified by the outside world - because his death comes days before the beginning of 2012. The regime has long promoted next year at the point at which the country would achieve development and prosperity.

For years it has been struggling with food shortages and an economy in crisis.
"It is an extremely convenient time for the North Korean leadership: they don't need to honour the promise that North Korea will become a strong, powerful and prosperous state," said Petrov, an expert on the country at the University of Sydney.

"The population will be required to work hard for long hours with very few celebrations of Kim Il-sung's centenary.

"North Korea is going to have a three year mourning period during which Jong-un will be consolidated as leader - exactly as happened [with his father] when Kim Il-sung died.

He added that while many citizens in North Korea would be genuinely distraught at the news, "it will not be as dramatic as it was in 1994 when Kim Il-sung died. That was real trauma, exacerbated by the famine...political cynicism is growing
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/dec/19/kim-jong-il-north-korean-leader-dies?newsfeed=true

Don't celebrate yet!

Drinks are on me.

 Kim Jong-il, the enigmatic North Korean leader, died on a train at 8:30 a.m. Saturday in his country. Forty-eight hours later, officials in South Korea still did not know anything about it — to say nothing of Washington, where the State Department acknowledged “press reporting” of Mr. Kim’s death well after North Korean state media had already announced it.

For South Korean and American intelligence services to have failed to pick up any clues to this momentous development — panicked phone calls between government officials, say, or soldiers massing around Mr. Kim’s train — attests to the secretive nature of North Korea, a country not only at odds with most of the world but also sealed off from it in a way that defies spies or satellites.

Asian and American intelligence services have failed before to pick up significant developments in North Korea. Pyongyang built a sprawling plant to enrich uranium that went undetected for about a year and a half until North Korean officials showed it off in late 2010 to an American nuclear scientist. The North also helped build a complete nuclear reactor in Syria without tipping off Western intelligence.

As the United States and its allies confront a perilous leadership transition in North Korea — a failed state with nuclear weapons — the closed nature of the country will greatly complicate their calculations. With little information about Mr. Kim’s son and successor, Kim Jong-un, and even less insight into the palace intrigue in Pyongyang, the North’s capital, much of their response will necessarily be guesswork.

“We have clear plans about what to do if North Korea attacks, but not if the North Korean regime unravels,” said Michael J. Green, a former Asia adviser in the Bush administration. “Every time you do these scenarios, one of the first objectives is trying to find out what’s going on inside North Korea.”

In many countries, that would involve intercepting phone calls between government officials or peering down from spy satellites. And indeed, American spy planes and satellites scan the country. Highly sensitive antennas along the border between South and North Korea pick up electronic signals. South Korean intelligence officials interview thousands of North Koreans who defect to the South each year.

And yet remarkably little is known about the inner workings of the North Korean regime. Pyongyang, officials said, keeps sensitive information limited to a small circle of officials, who do not talk.

“This is a society that thrives on its opaqueness,” said Christopher R. Hill, a former special envoy who negotiated with the North over its nuclear program. “It is very complex. To understand the leadership structure requires going way back into Korean culture to understand Confucian principles.”

On Monday, the Obama administration held urgent consultations with allies but said little publicly about Mr. Kim’s death. Senior officials acknowledged they were largely bystanders, watching the drama unfold in the North and hoping that it does not lead to acts of aggression against South Korea.

None of the situations envisioned by American officials for North Korea are comforting. Some current and former officials assume that Kim Jong-un is too young and untested to step confidently into his father’s shoes. Some speculate that the younger Mr. Kim might serve in a kind of regency, in which the real power would be wielded by military officials like Jang Song-taek, Kim Jong-il’s brother-in-law and confidant, who is 65.

Such an arrangement would do little to relieve the suffering of the North Korean people or defuse the tension over its nuclear ambitions. But it would be preferable to an open struggle for power in the country.

“A bad scenario is that they go through a smooth transition, and the people keep starving and they continue to develop nuclear weapons,” said Jeffrey A. Bader, a former Asia adviser to President Obama. “The unstable transition, in which no one is in charge, and in which control of their nuclear program becomes even more opaque, is even worse.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/world/asia/in-detecting-kim-jong-il-death-a-gobal-intelligence-failure.html

...but they make good Kim Chee,

 
North Korean troops shot dead three countrymen who were trying to cross the border into China, a Seoul activist said Tuesday, as Pyongyang tightens border controls after the death of leader Kim Jong-Il.

 File illustration photo shows a North Korean border patrol boat cruising the Yalu river in December 2011. North Korean troops shot dead three countrymen who were trying to cross the border into China, a Seoul activist said Tuesday, as Pyongyang tightens border controls after the death of leader Kim Jong-Il.
Border guards last Saturday killed the men in their 40s who were crossing the Yalu river from the northern border city of Hyesan, said Do Hee-Youn, who helps refugees from the North.

"People waiting at the Chinese side across the river to help the three defect saw the scene. The guards took with them the bodies which were lying on the ice," Do told AFP, citing sources in China's border county of Changbai.

South Korea's intelligence service said it could not immediately confirm the reported shootings.

About 23,000 North Koreans have fled repression or hunger in their homeland for South Korea since the 1950-1953 war, the vast majority in recent years.

They typically escape on foot via an increasingly porous border to neighbouring China, where they hide out and then travel to a third country to seek resettlement in South Korea.

Activists say the North intensified patrols along its border to try to prevent defections in the wake of Kim's death on December 17. They fear a tougher crackdown during the politically sensitive transition.

Do called it "very rare" for border guards immediately to open fire at refugees, saying the move was apparently linked to tightened security during the succession of power to Kim's son Jong-Un.

"I'm afraid it will become much harder for North Koreans to defect for a while," he said, adding the North's authorities had spread word among people in the border city about the latest deaths.

"They are trying to let people know that those trying to flee will be shot dead right away," said Do, citing sources in the North who communicate via mobile phones smuggled in from China.

 Your so correct

 ur DADS ARMY  Home guard me