Newspaper sees Kim Jong-Il's second son as potential successor
TOKYO (AFP) — North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il's second son has assumed a key official post, fuelling speculation that he will be groomed as the next leader in the country's communist dynasty, a report said Saturday.
Kim Jong-Chul, 27, had recently become vice chief of the ruling Korean Workers' Party's organisation and guidance department, the Mainichi Shimbun said, quoting several unnamed sources close to the North Korean administration.
The position, regarded as one of the party's most important posts, was assumed by Kim Jong-Il in 1969 before he succeeded his late father Kim Il-Sung, it said.
Kim Jong-Chul had an office in the same building as his father, from whom he often received direct guidance, the report said.
The organisation and guidance department is a seen as one of the ruling party's most powerful, as it has the authority to shuffle personnel and censor other departments.
The son was now seen as front-runner to take over the world's only communist family dynasty, as his two brothers had no positions in the ruling party which controls the reclusive state, it said.
There had been rumours from the imporverished and isolated nation that Kim Jong-Il's oldest son Kim Jong-Nam, 36, had belonged to the guidance department, but they had been denied, the Mainichi said.
Kim's youngest son, Kim Jong-Woon, 24, now served in the nation's military and was largely seen to have dropped out of the succession race, it said.
Jong-Nam is the son of actress Sung Hae-Rim, who reportedly died of an unidentified disease in a Moscow hospital in 2002.
Jong-Chul and Jong-Woon were born to a different mother, Ko Yong-Hui, a former dancer who died of lung cancer in 2004.
Kim Jong-Il inherited power from his father, Kim Il-Sung, who founded North Korea in 1948 and died in 1994, creating the world's first communist dynasty.
