Kim Jong Il Dead, Focus Shifts to Son

With the death of Kim Jong Il, there's now an even greater void in situational awareness inside the black hole that is North Korea.

The sudden death of Kim Jong Il is the "biggest shock you could have thrown into Asia," an expert on North Korea told CNN late Sunday night.
Victor Cha, who worked in White House National Security Council, says one of the likelier scenarios under which the North Korean regime could crumble was the sudden death of Kim Jong Il - and now it has happened.
"No one has any idea of what comes next," Cha said. "We are in unknown territory."
That uncertainty should have people on edge, a U.S. official told CNN's Pam Benson.
"An insecure North Korea could well be an even more dangerous North Korea," the official said.
Kim's son and heir, Kim Jong Un, is simply "not ready" to rule, Cha said.
He is barely 30, and his father began grooming him for the job only three years ago after the latter suffered a stroke.

It would be curious to eventually find out if the outpouring of emotion over his death was real, or if it was as fake/staged/manipulated as the supposed Hussein supporters on camera during the 'election' in early 2003.

The announcement of Kim Jong-il's death came in an emotional statement read out on national television.
The announcer, wearing black, struggled to keep back the tears as she said he had died of physical and mental over-work.
The KCNA later reported that he had died of a "severe myocardial infarction along with a heart attack" at 08:30 local time on Saturday (23:30 GMT Friday).
He had been on a train at the time, for one of his "field guidance" tours, KCNA said.
The state news agency said a funeral would be held in Pyongyang on 28 December and Kim Jong-un would head the funeral committee. A period of national mourning has been declared from 17 to 29 December.
Images from inside the secretive state showed people in the streets of Pyongyang weeping at the news of his death.
Ruling party members in one North Korean county were shown by state TV banging tables and crying out loud, the AFP news agency reports.

And what about Kim Jong Un, the boy wonder, er... "great successor"? How's the military going to react to him?

Thought to be aged around 27, Kim Jong Un had already been made a four-star general and occupied a prominent political post when he was reported to have made an important diplomatic visit to neighboring China in May this year.
On the trip, he introduced himself to the destitute North's main benefactor, possibly one of the most crucial diplomatic moves he will ever make.
"The rest of the world is going to have to look at someone who is basically a kid as having China's support to be the North's next leader," Yang Moo-min, of Seoul's University of North Korean Studies, said at the time.
The youngest of the leader's three sons, Kim was most likely born in 1984. His name in Chinese characters translates as "righteous cloud" while the media calls him "the young general".
Educated in Switzerland, he is thought to speak English and German, and bears a striking resemblance to his grandfather, the North's founder, Kim Il Sung.

By: Brant