Posted on 04/21/2009 5:52:30 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
Succession Plans Still Murky
2009-04-20
North Korea's leader appears increasingly ill, and time may be running out to find a successor.
This picture, taken some time in 1992, shows current North Korean leader Kim Jong Il (R) and then-leader Kim Il Sung (L), inspecting a soccer ground in Pyongyang.
WASHINGTON—Appointments to North Korea’s National Defense Commission (NDC) during recent meetings of the country’s rubber-stamp parliament show that leaders of the tightly closed country have begun to finalize plans for a successor to the ailing Kim Jong Il, analysts say.
The 12-member NDC, chaired by supreme leader Kim Jong Il, is the most powerful policy-making body in North Korea and controls the world’s fifth largest army.
But experts suggest that leaders may be grooming a recently appointed member of the NDC to take over following a noticeable decline in Kim’s health since he reportedly suffered a stroke last August.
Scott Snyder, director of the Asia Foundation’s U.S.-Korea Center, said scanty first-hand information makes it difficult to speculate about leadership politics in North Korea, but he suggested the country has been moving toward “conservative rectification” in recent years.
(Excerpt) Read more at rfa.org ...
Ping!
Images of Kim Jong-il. The one on the left was issued in June 2008, and the one on the right shows him on 9 April, 2009.
Wow - that’s a marked difference in less than a year.
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