Word: jong
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...this year and adopted a stronger public role, not long after the nuclear dispute 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...
...Gregg said he | is "a short, unprepossessing kid following a tremendously charismatic, long- tenured father, desperately trying to live up to him." In any case, as former Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger noted, the changing of the guard "adds uncertainty at precisely the time we don't need it." Jong Il plainly will find some rough going in acquiring his father's stature. Noted Norman Levin, a senior analyst at Rand Corp. in California: "If Kim Il Sung said white is black, he could make it stick. No one now has that sort of authority...
When Kim Il Sung's firstborn son 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...
...early family photograph shows a cherubic little boy in the uniform of a Soviet naval cadet, grinning as he stands nestled between his father and mother. But Kim Jong Il's childhood was hardly a settled one. He was only seven when he lost his mother. She died in labor, delivering a stillborn infant just a year after her husband was anointed leader of North Korea by Stalin's regime. The Korean War then engulfed the peninsula, and Kim Jong Il spent its duration in northeast China. Back home, he transferred from school to school before graduating from...
...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...