North Korean leader Kim Jong-il issued a special order banning all talk of power succession in the communist country, a news report said yesterday.
However, the intelligence community has questioned the report's credibility.
"Enemies are speaking ill of us by raising things such as father-to-son power succession," Kim said in a recent meeting with his top aides, according to South Korea's Yonhap news agency, which cited unidentified sources.
The question of who will take over after the 63-year-old Kim has been open to speculation since he succeeded his father Kim Il-sung in 1994, creating the world's first and so-far only communist dynasty.
Rumors have swirled in recent months that Kim was about to nominate a successor, with the focus on one of his three sons.
Last month, there was a report that one son, Kim Jong-chol, was at a banquet his father hosted for visiting Chinese President Hu Jintao (
Jong-chol, 24, and another son, Jong-un, 21, are believed to have been born to the same mother, Ko Yong-hi.
Another son, 34-year-old Kim Jong-nam, was born from the leader's unofficial relationship with actress Sung Hae-rim, who died in Moscow several years ago.
Little is known about Jong-chol, except that he studied in Switzerland and is a big fan of US professional basketball.
Jong-nam had long been considered a favorite to succeed his father -- but experts say he spoiled his chances by embarrassing Pyongyang in 2001, when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport.
He told Japanese officials he wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland.
According to Yonhap, Kim Jong-il instructed his aides to impose strict rules to keep people from mentioning his sons or a possible successor by pointing out concerns that a second hereditary succession would tarnish his image and his father's -- and would make North Korea a laughing stock in the international community -- Yonhap said.
The leader also ordered a halt to using honorific titles for Ko Yong-hi, Kim's purported official wife who died last year, and suspend campaigns to glorify her, Yonhap said.
In recent years, Ko has been referred to as "respected mother" and "great woman" in the North -- descriptions seen by many analysts as signs of the North's move to lay the groundwork for a hereditary succession.
Kim Jong-il has also ordered the ruling Workers' Party to ferret out those who spread false rumors about succession or speak about his family, and to punish offenders with a maximum sentence of life in prison, Yonhap said.
However, a South Korean intelligence official said he hadn't heard about the alleged order.
"It is strange for the North to issue such order at a time when things are calm inside the North [over possible power succession]," the official told reporters. He spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitive nature of his work.
He said he'd heard from Chinese sources who recently met senior North Korean officials that talk about succession had already been a taboo topic in the North.
‘THEY KILLED HOPE’: Four presidential candidates were killed in the 1980s and 1990s, and Miguel Uribe’s mother died during a police raid to free her from Pablo Escobar Colombian presidential candidate Miguel Uribe has died two months after being shot at a campaign rally, his family said on Monday, as the attack rekindled fears of a return to the nation’s violent past. The 39-year-old conservative senator, a grandson of former Colombian president Julio Cesar Turbay (1978-1982), was shot in the head and leg on June 7 at a rally in the capital, Bogota, by a suspected 15-year-old hitman. Despite signs of progress in the past few weeks, his doctors on Saturday announced he had a new brain hemorrhage. “To break up a family is the most horrific act of violence that
HISTORIC: After the arrest of Kim Keon-hee on financial and political funding charges, the country has for the first time a former president and former first lady behind bars South Korean prosecutors yesterday raided the headquarters of the former party of jailed former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol to gather evidence in an election meddling case against his wife, a day after she was arrested on corruption and other charges. Former first lady Kim Keon-hee was arrested late on Tuesday on a range of charges including stock manipulation and corruption, prosecutors said. Her arrest came hours after the Seoul Central District Court reviewed prosecutors’ request for an arrest warrant against the 52-year-old. The court granted the warrant, citing the risk of tampering with evidence, after prosecutors submitted an 848-page opinion laying out
North Korean troops have started removing propaganda loudspeakers used to blare unsettling noises along the border, South Korea’s military said on Saturday, days after Seoul’s new administration dismantled ones on its side of the frontier. The two countries had already halted propaganda broadcasts along the demilitarized zone, Seoul’s military said in June after the election of South Korean President Lee Jae-myung, who is seeking to ease tensions with Pyongyang. The South Korean Ministry of National Defense on Monday last week said it had begun removing loudspeakers from its side of the border as “a practical measure aimed at helping ease
STAGNATION: Once a bastion of leftist politics, the Aymara stronghold of El Alto is showing signs of shifting right ahead of the presidential election A giant cruise ship dominates the skyline in the city of El Alto in landlocked Bolivia, a symbol of the transformation of an indigenous bastion keenly fought over in tomorrow’s presidential election. The “Titanic,” as the tallest building in the city is known, serves as the latest in a collection of uber-flamboyant neo-Andean “cholets” — a mix of chalet and “chola” or Indigenous woman — built by Bolivia’s Aymara bourgeoisie over the past two decades. Victor Choque Flores, a self-made 46-year-old businessman, forked out millions of US dollars for his “ship in a sea of bricks,” as he calls his futuristic 12-story
RSS