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.
MONEY MATTERS: Xi was to highlight projects such as a new high-speed railway between Belgrade and Budapest, as Serbia is entirely open to Chinese trade and investment Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic yesterday said that “Taiwan is China” as he made a speech welcoming Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) to Belgrade, state broadcaster Radio Television of Serbia (RTS) said. “We have a clear and simple position regarding Chinese territorial integrity,” he told a crowd outside the government offices while Xi applauded him. “Yes, Taiwan is China.” Xi landed in Belgrade on Tuesday night on the second leg of his European tour, and was greeted by Vucic and most government ministers. Xi had just completed a two-day trip to France, where he held talks with French President Emmanuel Macron as the
With the midday sun blazing, an experimental orange and white F-16 fighter jet launched with a familiar roar that is a hallmark of US airpower, but the aerial combat that followed was unlike any other: This F-16 was controlled by artificial intelligence (AI), not a human pilot, and riding in the front seat was US Secretary of the Air Force Frank Kendall. AI marks one of the biggest advances in military aviation since the introduction of stealth in the early 1990s, and the US Air Force has aggressively leaned in. Even though the technology is not fully developed, the service is planning
INTERNATIONAL PROBE: Australian and US authorities were helping coordinate the investigation of the case, which follows the 2015 murder of Australian surfers in Mexico Three bodies were found in Mexico’s Baja California state, the FBI said on Friday, days after two Australians and an American went missing during a surfing trip in an area hit by cartel violence. Authorities used a pulley system to hoist what appeared to be lifeless bodies covered in mud from a shaft on a cliff high above the Pacific. “We confirm there were three individuals found deceased in Santo Tomas, Baja California,” a statement from the FBI’s office in San Diego, California, said without providing the identities of the victims. Australian brothers Jake and Callum Robinson and their American friend Jack Carter
CUSTOMS DUTIES: France’s cognac industry was closely watching the talks, fearing that an anti-dumping investigation opened by China is retaliation for trade tensions French President Emmanuel Macron yesterday hosted Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) at one of his beloved childhood haunts in the Pyrenees, seeking to press a message to Beijing not to support Russia’s war against Ukraine and to accept fairer trade. The first day of Xi’s state visit to France, his first to Europe since 2019, saw respectful, but sometimes robust exchanges between the two men during a succession of talks on Monday. Macron, joined initially by EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, urged Xi not to allow the export of any technology that could be used by Russia in its invasion