Focus on Jong-Il funeral for clues to North Korea’s mood

NORTH KOREA was preparing a massive farewell to late leader Kim Jong-Il yesterday as it strove to strengthen a new personality cult around his son and successor Kim Jong-Un.

The secretive state has so far given no details of today’s funeral for its “dear leader” of the past 17 years and has not invited foreign delegations to the event.

But analysts say the regime will, as it did in 1994 when Kim Jong-Il’s own father died, use the event to shore up loyalty to the new leader and will likely mobilise hundreds of thousands of people.

The untested Kim Jong-Un, aged only in his late 20s, has been thrust into the world spotlight since his father died suddenly on December 17, aged 69.

Official media has added to his flimsy CV, declaring him “great successor”, supreme commander of the world’s fourth-largest military and head of the ruling party’s powerful Central Committee.

The son, who has not yet been formally appointed to the party and military posts, has been the central figure in scenes of mourning at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where his father lies in state in a glass coffin.

While Kim Jong-Il had 20 years to prepare for the communist world’s only dynastic succession, Kim Jong-Un has had just three.

The South’s Yonhap news agency quoted head of Seoul’s National Intelligence Service, Won Sei-hoon, as telling lawmakers the North looks likely to continue the policies of its late leader.

Analysts will closely watch the funeral for clues about who will most influence him.

South Korean media, basing predictions on arrangements for the 1994 funeral, said the obsequies would likely begin at 10am (1am GMT) today, with Kim Jong-Un and senior officials paying final respects at the memorial palace.

They said the military was expected to fire a 24-gun salute and troops would march through central Pyongyang, accompanying a limousine carrying Kim Jong-Il’s coffin and another car with a giant photo.

Military marching bands would play funeral music while convoys of vehicles carrying flowers and senior officials would follow the coffin as hundreds of thousands looked on, the media forecast.

Mourning will officially end tomorrow with a nationwide memorial service and a three-minute silence.

“Mourning shots will be fired in Pyongyang and all provincial units across the country, and three minutes of silence will be observed,” the North’s official news agency said.

South Korea, which has remained technically at war with the North for six decades, has responded cautiously to the developments in its neighbour, which it blames for two deadly border incidents last year.

Unlike in 1994, the Seoul government expressed sympathy to the North’s people and made other conciliatory gestures. But it authorised mourning visits by just the two South Korean delegations, a restriction that the North termed “inhuman”.