The newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo, citing an unidentified source in North Korea, said Kim's youngest son, Kim Jong Un, had cemented his position as the second most powerful person in the country when he was named recently to the post of vice chairman of the Defense Commission, which is led by his father.
The move was announced at a mass gathering of military leaders and security officials on Feb. 10, according to the newspaper's source, but emerged only Wednesday, as the 69th birthday festivities for the elder Kim were in full swing in the nation's capital, Pyongyang.
The celebration, typically crowned by a vast turnout of goose-stepping soldiers and dancing, uniformed women in the city's central square, was punctuated - as it is every year - by a flower show featuring bright red tuberous begonias called kimjongilia.
Yet the events were marred by the leader's failure to follow through on a promise of a day's food to all of the country's 24 million people, the Associated Press reported. The North, chronically short of food, is reportedly slipping into a deep crisis, and defectors cited by a South Korean website, Open Radio for North Korea, said the government could not afford to deplete its already meager stockpiles.
Kim Jong Un, who is believed to be 28 or 29, appeared publicly for the first time at a meeting of the ruling Workers' Party last fall. He was given the rank of four-star general and received two significant political posts: membership on the party's Central Committee and a vice chairmanship of its Central Military Committee.
This article appeared on page A - 2 of the San Francisco Chronicle
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