More About Kim Jong-il's Death

Not surprisingly, Kim Jong-il's death was the headline story in most South Korean papers today.

A selection of today's South Korean papers.

Today, the South Korean government issued a statement of condolences to the North Korean people but chose not to send an official delegation to the mourning ceremony being held in Pyongyang, opting instead to support a visit to North Korea by family members of a few South Korean politicians and business leaders that had relatively close relationships with Kim Jong-il.

Other South Korean news articles reported that it seems that Kim Jong-eun is now officially the leader of the North Korean government, and that some news agencies in the North now refer to him as "respectable" Kim Jong-eun.

Other articles in the international press continued to raise questions about the capacity of Kim Jong-eun to lead the North Korean government, and wondered about the implications of the passing of Kim Jong-il for the regular people of North Korea.  But things appear pretty stable in North Korea, with no unusual activity reported near the border with South Korea, or near the border with China.


Reports from North Korea about the passing of Kim Jong-il are quite surprising.  A few articles have shown people dramatically mourning and crying his death, but some people that I spoke with have suggested that North Korean citizens are being forced to act out this way by their government's propagandists.  The North Korean régime has, in the past, staged events in order to portray a rosy yet obviously false reality to the international community, as revealed by one BBC journalist who was invited into the country.  A radically different picture of life in North Korea is painted by people who defected to South Korea.  The degree of control exerted by the North Korean régime over the people of North Korea is shocking!  It seems that regular North Koreans obtain no information whatsoever about life anywhere outside of North Korea.

It seems, at the moment, that the transition of power to Kim Jong-eun is occurring smoothly in North Korea, and that nothing dramatic will transpire as a result of the passing of Kim Jong-il.  But because the country is almost totally isolated from the rest of the world, it is very difficult to know what is going on there.  I think that this is why so many international leaders are a little bit concerned by what is happening there now.