North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has been preparing a military-led collective leadership to rule the communist country after his death, a news report said on Sunday. Kim, 65, who inherited power from his father, had given up the dynastic succession for various reasons, South Korea’s Yonhap news agency quoted unnamed diplomatic sources in Beijing as saying. “Chairman Kim, who had picked his eldest son Jong-Nam to succeed to him, changed his mind a few years ago and is preparing to allow in a collective leadership system,” one of the sources said.Some leaders in the North oppose another father-to-son power transfer amid fears that Kim’s entire family could be blamed for economic failure, the sources said. “I understand Chairman Kim is test-running the collective leadership with the military authorities in the centre,” another source said.
Kim is firmly in charge of his nuclear-armed state but with no obvious successor in sight to lead the reclusive regime, which has built a personality cult around his family since its foundation in 1948. He officially took over the leadership from his father and founding president Kim Il-Sung in 1997, three years after the senior Kim died, creating the worldÂ’s first communist dynasty.
Kim has survived a decade marked by famine, a collapsing economy and international sanctions, by assiduously cultivating his 1.1 million-strong military. Media speculation has been incessant about who will rule in the post-Kim era, with KimÂ’s three sons often cited as possible successors.
The eldest son, Jong-Nam, 35, who has reportedly been living a comfortable life in Macau for the past three years and who briefly appeared in Beijing earlier this month to head home for his fatherÂ’s birthday, is thought to have lost trust by being arrested while trying to enter Japan in 2001 on a forged passport. He has two half brothers -Jong-Chol, 23, and Jong-Woon, 20.