The eldest son has a yen to see Disneyland. A second son rocks to the riffs of Eric Clapton. A third is said to be the spitting image of his father. No one knows whether one of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's sons will take the reins of power one day, but the succession issue has gained currency as North Korea enters a new era as a nuclear-armed state. At 64, Kim has just surpassed the age at which his father, Kim Il Sung, picked him as the next leader in the first dynastic Marxist-Leninist succession in the world. Now, as Kim's bouffant coif makes him instantly recognizable around the globe, the hair is apparent but the heir is hidden. Some Korea watchers say it's because Kim frets over diluting his power. "If you announce a successor, you immediately create a second source of power for people who aren't satisfied with how things are going," said Jasper Becker, the author of "Rogue Regime: Kim Jong Il and the Looming Threat of North Korea," a book published last year.
Experts on North Korea differ over how and when Kim might pick a successor. "The third generation remains a question mark," said Sohn Kwang-joo, a former South Korean intelligence analyst who wrote a book about the Kim family and now heads the Daily NK, an Internet site. "It is certain he will try to pass on rule to one of his sons. Whether he succeeds or not does not depend on him but other factors."