North Korea leader Kim Jong Il dies – latimes.com

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North Korea leader Kim Jong Il dies – latimes.com.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the mercurial strongman who styled himself as a “Dear Leader” while ruling over an impoverished police state, died at 69, according to North Korean state media.

Kim was believed to have suffered from multiple chronic illnesses, but his death — reportedly from a heart attack while traveling by train on Saturday morning — was sudden. He had been grooming a son to succeed him, and his death creates uncertainty about the future direction of a nation with few international friends but a nuclear weapons capability.

For nearly two decades, Kim both defied and baffled international leaders with his isolated regime’s nuclear ambition, inflammatory rhetoric and surprise attacks on South Korea, including the suspected March 2010 sinking of a Southern military ship and the bombing of a South Korea-controlled island in November of that year.

South Korean President Lee Myung-bak held an emergency meeting with the nation’s top military officials and put them on high alert. But the move was seen as a formality, and there was little open sign of nervousness in Seoul at Kim’s passing.

Many South Korean experts said that China faces the greatest risk if the leadership transition does not go smoothly and predicted that Beijing would soon send high-ranking officials to show support for the younger Kim.

Kim Jong Il 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.