The BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-16239693
North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has died at the age of 69, state-run television has announced.
Mr Kim, who has led the communist nation since the death of his father in 1994, died on a train while visiting an area outside the capital, the announcement said.
The Age:
http://www.theage.com.au/world/kim-jong-il-dead-20111219-1p1sk.html
Kim Jong Il, the second-generation North Korean dictator who defied global condemnation to build nuclear weapons while his people starved, has died, Yonhap News reported.
He is believed to have been 70 years old, although North Korean official records said he was 69 years old.
The news came in a radio broadcast at noon local time, Yonhap reported, citing North Korea's official media. The veteran leader died on December 17 at 8.30am, a weeping announcer said, Agence France-Presse reported.
I can only hope that this is the beginning of North Korea's acceptance back into the free-world and the reunification process; maybe even bringing back the Emperor. Hopefully Seoul and Pyongyang will start talks more or less immediately to finally get rid of the stupid line that separates the two Koreas.
I was born into a world of two Germanys and two Koreas. East and West Germany were reunited in 1990 rather seamlessly as it finally turned out but the 38th parallel that marks the DMZ between the Koreas remains.
Not long after the news reached the South, I got a text message from a friend of mine in Busan who has gone home for Christmas. He seems to think that the television report was all staged, even down to the crying from the lady and that Kim actually died maybe two days ago because he was apparantly seen opening a shopping centre (after seeing this new invention in China) on Friday and that maybe North Korean media were waiting for the most appropriate moment to break the news.
The South remains on high alert; almost a state of emergency because really no-one know much about the third son Kim Jong-Un at all. Quite unlike his father who had maybe the best part of 20 years being groomed for the position, Kim Jong-Un has had at best 15 months. One of his older brothers Kim Jong-Nam had fallen out of favour after being arrested and deported from Japan in 2001 because he wanted to go to Tokyo Disneyland and had travelled on a forged Dominican Republic passport.
The next few weeks and months will be interesting as the new Kim begins to show his hand. Presumably his government will be propped up by China merely to stop a wave of refugees from fleeing North Korea's borders. Given that there are 1.2 million soldiers under the employ of the government from a population of 24 million, even just the economic task of demobbing them should reunification ever appear on the cards is a difficult one. Quite unlike the two Germanys, where the East was the biggest and most prosperous economy other than Russia on the dismal side of the Iron Curtain, North Korea in comparision is impoverished and very very closed.
There are also reports of a missile being tested off the coast. Presumably this is a show of strength because I'm sure that the military probably wouldn't be all that happy at an untested 20-something assuming control of the armed forces.
Some commentators have mentioned that maybe there is an opportunity for the people to rise up in much the same way as many peoples have done in the so-called "Arab Spring" of 2011. I don't think this highly likely because as far as I'm aware, there are no mobile phone networks in North Korea to speak of, the internet as we know it doesn't really exist and certainly none of the social media tools like Facebook or Twitter that were instrumental in Egypt, Libya and Tunisia.
If the cult of personality fades, the three most likely outcomes for North Korea are regeiem collapse, a military coup and the status quo being maintained in much the same way as when Khrushchev took Stalin's position.
I like many South Koreans would love to see the day of a reunited Korea but I just don't see it happening in the near future. I hope and pray that history proves me wrong.
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