North Korean leader Kim Jong Il could soon name his successor to head the hard-line communist nation, a Russian news agency reported Tuesday. The ruling Korean Workers' Party celebrates its 60th anniversary on Monday, and an announcement of the North's next leader could be timed around that event, an unidentified diplomatic official in Pyongyang told the ITAR-Tass news agency, which has a correspondent in the North Korean capital.One option for Kim, 63, is to carry communism's first and only dynasty into the next generation of his family, which founded the Stalinist regime in 1948. Another option is to hand over the government — and its possible nuclear arsenal — to someone outside the family, such as a figure from the hard-line Korea People's Army.
| Anybody actually see the lil weasel lately? |
In August 2004, Cheong Seong-chang, a North Korea expert at the independent Sejong Institute research center just outside Seoul, claimed Kim was likely within the next few years to anoint his son, Jong Chul, 22, as his successor.