Kim Jong-un | featured news

Youth is not considered an asset in the nation, where mandatory lectures have billed Kim Jong Eun, Kim Jong Il's twentysomething son, as a political breath of air. In a region where Confucian thinking about seniority still holds sway, where political life generally begins at 50, it isn’t easy to sell the public on a twentysomething who has never held a real job.

The Sept. 28 meeting could signal the formal designation of Kim Jong-il’s youngest son as his heir apparent.

The first congress in three decades of the ruling Workers Party is rumored to be imminent, suggesting that a succession is being prepared that will hand power to a third generation of the first family.

There is no official confirmation of the reclusive leader's travel or its purpose. The son is expected to be named as Kim's successor. In a trip shrouded in mystery and speculation, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il appeared Thursday to be traveling to China by train with his youngest son, according to a South Korean government official.

As its leader, Kim Jong-il, was watching, North Korea’s rubber-stamp Parliament fired its prime minister and elevated his brother-in-law to the regime’s No. 2 post on Monday in a sweeping government reshuffle analysts said was aimed at defusing public anger over a disastrous revaluation of its currency while consolidating Mr. Kim’s power.

North Korea’s government appears to be trying to build a personality cult around Kim Jong-un, the youngest son of Kim Jong-il.

The youngest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has taken charge at the country's spy agency to prepare him to inherit the leadership of the nation from his father, a news report said Wednesday.

South Korea’s main intelligence agency has reported on signs that Kim Jong-un, the youngest and least-known son of Kim Jong-il, was the likely successor in North Korea.