North Korea taps 26-year-old son as successor

updated 7:47 p.m. ET June 2, 2009

SEOUL, South Korea - One photo shows a chubby-cheeked boy with an impish grin. Former classmates at a Swiss boarding school describe a shy student who loved basketball and Jean-Claude Van Damme. Recent reports describe him as overweight and a heavy drinker.

Now 26, Kim Jong Un has reportedly been tapped to become the next leader of nuclear-armed North Korea.

The youngest son of authoritarian leader Kim Jong Il, he appears to have led a cloistered life, pulled back home after his Swiss schooldays and kept out of the limelight.

But he's already being hailed as "our Commander Kim," and North Koreans are busy learning the lyrics to a new song praising him as the next leader of the world's first communist dynasty, South Korea's Dong-a Ilbo newspaper said Tuesday.

South Korea's spy agency told lawmakers the Pyongyang regime has begun "pledging its allegiance to Kim Jong Un," legislator Park Jie-won said Tuesday. The Hankook Ilbo newspaper said the announcement was made after North Korea's provocative underground nuclear test last week.

The National Intelligence Service refused to confirm the reports.

A time of mounting tensions
The apparent anointment comes at a time of mounting tensions over the May 25 nuclear test and North Korea's April 5 rocket launch. The North also appears to be preparing to test-fire an array of medium- and long-range missiles, reports said. Global powers are discussing how to rein in Pyongyang for its nuclear defiance.

Analysts say the saber-rattling is part of a campaign to build unity and support for a successor to the 67-year-old Kim Jong Il, who reportedly suffered a stroke last August and looked gaunt and markedly grayer in an April appearance at parliament.

Kim is believed to want to name a successor by 2012 — the centenary of the birth of his father, North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung — and the regime undertook a massive campaign last year to gear up for the celebrations.

The regime stepped up the pace last month, launching a "150-day battle" urging North Koreans to work harder to build the country's economy.

"Before 2012, North Korea must convince the army and the public that Jong Un is the best successor," said Atsuhito Isozaki, assistant professor of North Korean politics at Tokyo's private Keio University. "To pave the way for Jong Un's leadership, it is highly likely that North Korea will turn recent nuclear and missile tests into his achievements."

Campaign set to culminate in October
Analyst Cheong Seong-chang of the Sejong Institute think tank outside Seoul noted the "politically driven" 150-day campaign is set to culminate in early October. He said North Korea could hold a national convention then — its first in nearly 30 years — to formally announce Kim's successor.

In the 1970s, Kim Il Sung, known as the "Great Leader," arranged for his son to take credit for a "70-day battle" before he was tapped as his father's successor, Cheong said. Kim Jong Il — the "Dear Leader" — formally assumed leadership upon his father's death in 1994.

Kim Duk-hong, a high-profile defector from North Korea who witnessed the "70-day battle," said such campaigns are designed to strengthen the leader's totalitarian rule and lay the groundwork for a transfer of power.

For years, Kim Jong Il's eldest son Jong Nam, 38, was considered the favorite to succeed his father until he was caught trying to enter Japan on a fake passport in 2001, reportedly to visit the Disney resort.

Kim considers the middle son, Jong Chol, too effeminate, according to the leader's former sushi chef.

Jong Un, however, is the "spitting image" of his father and the leader's favorite, the chef, who goes by the pen name Kenji Fujimoto, wrote in a 2003 memoir.

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