Kim Jong Il

(born February 16, 1941, Siberia, Russia, U.S.S.R.) North Korean politician, son of the former North Korean premier and (communist) Korean Workers' Party (KWP) chairman Kim Il-sung, and successor to his father as ruler of North Korea.

Kim Jong Il was placed in safety in Manchuria by his father during the Korean War. After attending a pilot's training college in East Germany for two years, he graduated (1963) from Kim Il-sung University. He served in numerous routine posts in the KWP until becoming his father's secretary. He worked closely with his father in the 1967 party purge and then was assigned several important jobs. Kim was appointed in September 1973 to the powerful position of party secretary in charge of organization, propaganda, and agitation.

Kim was officially designated his father's successor in October 1980, was given command of the armed forces in 1990–91, and held high-ranking posts on the Central Committee, the Politburo, and the Party Secretariat. When Kim Il-sung died of a heart attack in 1994, Kim Jong Il became North Korea's de facto leader. He was named chairman of the KWP in October 1997, and in September 1998 he formally assumed the nation's highest post. Since the position of president had been eliminated by the Supreme People's Assembly, which reserved for Kim Il-sung the posthumous title of “eternal president,” the younger Kim was reelected chairman of the National Defense Commission, an office whose powers were expanded.

With his country facing a struggling economy and a famine, Kim offered signs that he would support reform, particularly with regard to North Korea's long-standing policy of isolationism. Throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s, Kim sought to improve ties with a number of countries. He halted testing of a long-range missile in 1999 after the United States agreed to ease its economic sanctions against North Korea, and in June 2000 Kim met with South Korean leader Kim Dae Jung. In what was the first summit between leaders of the two countries, an agreement was reached to pursue reunification. Ties were also established with Australia and Italy. Relations with the United States, however, deteriorated in 2002, when President George W. Bush characterized Kim's regime as part of an “axis of evil” (along with Iran and Iraq). The following year Kim announced that North Korea was pulling out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and planning on developing nuclear weapons. The move was widely seen as a negotiating tactic to secure economic aid and a nonaggression pact from the United States. A series of talks was subsequently held, but little progress was made.

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