Kim’s death was announced by state television from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. No cause of death was reported, but Kim was believed to have suffered in recent years from diabetes and heart disease.
The diminutive leader was believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but nonetheless appeared in numerous photos released by state media as he toured state facilities and in recent months embarked on rare trips outside North Korea -– to China and Russia.
In September 2010, Kim announced that his foreign-educated third son, Kim Jong Eun, would succeed him as the regime’s third leader since its emergence more than a half century ago.
Kim, who came to power in 1994 upon the death of his father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, led one of the world’s most enduring dictatorships, a repressive regime that has long defied predictions of its demise. Against the odds, it survived into the 21st century while its people went hungry and its allies drifted away to pursue globalization and reform.
Kim remained to the end an unrepentant communist, refusing to liberalize North Korea’s economy even as his people became some of the world’s poorest, with millions dying of starvation and tens of thousands imprisoned on charges of political crimes. While rival South Korea became one of the world’s wealthiest nations, many in the North have earned less than a dollar a month.
In a news conference after his defection, Hwang warned of a growing possibility that his homeland might launch an attack. "The preparation for war exceeds your imagination," he said.
Many outsiders viewed the flight of Hwang as another sign that the North Korean regime was on its last legs, but once again it weathered the storm, perhaps even benefiting from the fears of war heightened by Hwang's warning.
Despite sending a test missile over Japan in June 1999 and other such incidents, North Korea under Kim Jong Il also sent signals that it is open to new alliances after decades of isolation. Billions of dollars in international aid poured into North Korea during the 1990s, which did little in return.
Many analysts conclude that Kim Jong Il has played a poor hand of cards skillfully.
"I tend to disregard rumors that he's irrational, a man that nobody can do business with," said Alexander Mansourov, a longtime Korea scholar and a former Russian diplomat who was posted in Pyongyang in the late 1980s. "I believe that he is smart. He's pragmatic. And I think he can be ruthless. He's a man who will not loosen his grip in any way on the people around him."
His obsession for movies led to one of the strangest incidents associated with him: The 1978 kidnappings of South Korean actress Choi En-hui and her director husband Shin Sang-ok. The couple's account of their ordeal, given after they escaped North Korea in 1986, sounds like a B-movie script.
They said Kim Jong Il held Choi under house arrest and imprisoned Shin for four years for a failed escape attempt. Kim then forced them to work in the North Korean film industry, paying them handsomely while keeping them in the gilded cage of his artistic and social circles. Although the country was having problems paying its debts, Kim lived extravagantly and spent tens of millions of dollars on their film productions, according to Choi and Shin.
The couple told Washington Post reporter Don Oberdorfer that Kim was a "micro-manager" who made all the major decisions in North Korea because of his father's ailing condition. Shin described Kim as "very bright," but said that he had no sense of guilt about his misdeeds "due to his background and upbringing."
While the Dear Leader is said to have indulged his appetite for the finer things, his people were literally starving to death. The collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s hit North Korea hard when guaranteed trade deals with Moscow came to an end.
And then devastating floods compounded the famine. The North Korean regime admitted almost 250,000 people perished between 1995 and 1998, but some outside groups believe it was more like ten times that figure.
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