Kim re-elected North Korean leader

Kim Jong Il, the communist bloc’s first leader to inherit power from his father, was re-elected as North Korea’s top man today, as his isolated regime struggles to win US guarantees for its security in exchange for its nuclear weapons program.

As cars mounted with loudspeakers went around announcing Kim’s re-election, people throughout the isolated state poured out of their homes and factories “dancing with bunches of flowers in their hands,” said the North’s official news agency KCNA.

Streets were decorated with flags and flowers, brass bands struck up tunes, and schoolchildren sang songs praising Kim.

Pyongyang’s rubber-stamp Supreme People’s Assembly “broke into stormy cheers of ‘hurrah’ overwhelmed with unbounded emotion, jubilation and ardent reverence,” as its deputies elected Kim as chairman of the country’s highest governing body, National Defence Commission, North Korean news media reported.

The National Defence Commission oversees North Korea’s 1.1 million-strong People’s Army, the world’s fifth largest military and the backbone of Kim’s totalitarian rule.

Kim, 61, has held that post since 1993, a year before his father, President Kim Il Sung, died of heart failure in 1994.

Five years later, he was re-elected to the post while the parliament made it the highest in government hierarchy.