Word: dears
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...with the U.S. and other countries began sharpening. At the same time, some North Korean officials had asked Chinese physicians for advice on diagnosis of a peculiar brain injury -- a wound that insiders said Kim Jong Il had suffered in a car crash last September. The fact that the Dear Leader appeared in public and in seemingly fine condition soon afterward hinted at a possible face-saving attempt to sideline him from duty...
...came into the world on Feb. 16, 1942, he was given the Korean name Jong Il. He was also called Yura, which is Russian. After all, he was born in Khabarovsk, in the Soviet Far East. North Korean mythographers prefer to obscure that unpatriotic nativity, claiming that their Dear Leader first saw light on sacred Mount Paektu -- the site, according to legend, where Korean civilization sprang into existence 5,500 years ago. Such official obfuscations have ensured that Kim Jong Il remains mostly myth himself, even as he succeeds his father and becomes the leader of one of the world...
...Jong Il's transfiguration was startling. Until 1975 Kim Il Sung's younger brother Kim Yong Ju was heir apparent. Then, suddenly, Jong Il was publicly hailed as the "party center"; soon afterward, he became Dear Leader to his father's Great Leader. He also became culture czar, producing movies and lecturing on the art of opera. Kim Il Sung spared nothing to burnish his son's reputation. The younger Kim was credited, years after the supposed incident, with saving his father from a 1967 coup attempt. He was named General Secretary of the Workers' Party. Though without military training...
...displays a taste for the gaudy that is at odds with his country's spartan ways. He surrounds himself with the scions of his father's wartime comrades, a new generation of revolutionaries who call themselves the Loyal Warriors and whose cars carry license plates emblazoned with the Dear Leader's birth date. Mercurial and erratic, Kim Jong Il rarely meets foreign dignitaries. Defectors have told tales about his huge film collection, his penchant for Portuguese oranges and -- though he is reportedly married with two children -- a weakness for Swedish women. More ominous is his supposed ruthless management of Pyongyang...
...world's most durable communist leader, he had ruled his country since 1948. His death came just as U.S. and North Korean negotiators were meeting in Geneva to resume discussions over North Korea's nuclear program. Kim's heir apparent is his son Kim Jong Il, 53, known as "Dear Leader...