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.