Melchizedek Prophecy - North Korea is on the brink of self-destructing, and sinking into oblivion

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Melchizedek says the continued testing of nuclear bombs by North Korea has added to the years of damage done by other nuclear powers since 1950 to our Earth and environment.  He also says that while the current situation might get us to the edge of nuclear war, it will not happen because Mother Earth has begun the process of repairing our planet from the carnage of the past.

However, continued activity could have enormous consequences to North Korea if it does not stop.  A spiritual intervention might be needed to end the build up once and for all which remains to be seen.  Continued ignorance of the damage being done by the testing, will result in severe actions that may be quite devastating.

The Chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea is the head of state and supreme commander of the armed forces of North Korea and the most powerful person in the government as the Supreme Leader of North Korea is Kim Jong-un..

Let us hope and pray Melchizedek is right.       

World

North Korea Nuclear Test Site Collapse Killed 200 People: Report

Sofia Lotto Persio, Newsweek

More than 200 people are believed to have died in underground tunnels after a collapse at North Korea’s Punggye-ri nuclear facility.

The test site was reportedly badly shaken by the aftermath of the country’s sixth nuclear test, a 100-kiloton hydrogen bomb roughly seven times more powerful than the atomic bomb the U.S. dropped on Hiroshima in 1945.

North Korean sources told Japanese television channel Asahi TV that the collapse occurred in October during the construction of an underground tunnel at the facility.

Around 100 workers were stuck underground and a group that was sent to their rescue were also buried after another collapse, causing a total death toll of around 200.

A series of small-scale earthquakes that followed the September 3 test indicated the facility, built south of the Mantapsan mountain, may no longer be stable enough to conduct further tests.

According to experts, the building of new underground tunnels would indicate a willingness to move the test site to another part of the mountain, as the facility is unlikely to be abandoned. 

 “If North Korea were to attempt to continue testing under this mountain (such as in the area more to the eastern side), then we would expect to see new tunneling in the future near the North Portal, still under Mt. Mantap,” researchers Frank Pabian and Jack Liu wrote in a report published earlier this month on the North Korea monitoring website 38 North.
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Obamaville March 24, 2015 - Obama Blasts Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel for Campaign Promises

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In a further sign of the deterioration of relations between the Obama Administration and Israel, the President took the unusual step of blasting the Israeli Prime Minister in news conferences for statements the PM made on the eve of the Israeli elections.

The stunning and decisive victory by Netanyahu seemed to fuel the attacks by Obama who is still outraged that the PM addressed the United States Congress without the approval of the president.

Obama called the promises by Netanyahu "cynical" and 19 times in one news conference, said they would lead to a reassessment by the United States of our relationship with Israel.

Now something is very wrong with the righteous attack by Obama.  This is the same Obama, who made 508 promises in his own 2008 campaign for president and only managed to fulfill 38% of them, and then added more in 2012 he is yet to fulfill.

Therefore, Obama can fail to deliver 62% of the time himself but thinks an election campaign in another country should be free of any campaign promises, and only deal in campaign facts.

Get real Mr. President, it seems all politicians are foot loose and fancy free when it comes to delivering campaign promises.

We do not need to encourage the terrorist world by alienating our only true friend in the Middle East over nonsense such as campaign promises.

For those of you suffering from memory loss, the following are two articles by left-leaning news outlets detailing the failure of Obama to deliver on his own campaign promises.

Do Promises Matter Anymore? Countdown Day 36

Posted: 10/01/2012 7:55 pm EDT Updated: 12/01/2012 5:12 am EST

Howard Fineman, Editorial director, Huffington Post Media Group

WASHINGTON -- In the 2008 presidential campaign, Barack Obama was full of promise -- 508 of them to be precise. He was the harbinger of hope in the last dark months of the George W. Bush years.

But with just six weeks to go until Election Day 2012, President Obama has made few new promises and is not repeating many of the original ones. By PolitiFact's accounting, he has delivered on 38 percent of them -- a lousy shooting percentage in the NBA.

Instead, Obama is selling himself based on what he isn't: Mitt Romney. And rather than trying to convince voters that great days surely lie ahead -- a tough sell to a skeptical electorate -- he often offers a litany of reduced expectations, grim economic realism and rueful lamentations about the gridlock in Washington that he, in his innocence, did not expect. His slogan, "Forward," can sound less like an invitation to a glorious Elysium and more like a military command on a bloody battlefield.

The candidate who won on the high-octane power of optimism is now running on the cautious notion that the future ain't what it used to be.

The message, rarely overtly expressed, is that we are facing a tough grind (in terms of tax increases, slow job growth and entitlement cutbacks), and it's better to have a compassionate, user-friendly communitarian in the Oval Office than a wealthy, spreadsheet-and-shredder CEO who was born with a silver foot in his mouth.

The president now leads in this war of attrition and lowered sights.

Despite what the polls say, though, it is not clear the Obama strategy will hold up all the way to Election Day. There are three inherent risks: Voters prefer campaigns of dreams to those of realism. A chance, admittedly slight, remains that Romney will find his voice and a message at the last minute. And voters may yet choose to take one last look at the details of the president's record.

What they will find is that the Obama that is often isn't the Obama that wanted to be. This is not an observation confined to the Rush Limbaugh right; many on the progressive left have said the same thing.

That's where the past promises come in -- and the question of whether they mean much in our promiscuously promissory age.

Only once in any direct and sharp way has the president been confronted with tough questions about a failed promise. When Univision news anchors asked him why he had not won comprehensive immigration reform, or even pushed for it, Obama seemed both surprised and confused that he had been pressed on such an obvious point. The answer he gave -- that the pressures in Congress were just too daunting -- was less than convincing.

The president has kept promises No. 1 and No. 2: He calmly led the fight to bring the United States back from the brink of economic catastrophe (including a workable bailout of the auto industry), and he got a version of a national health care system passed and, as it turned out, sanctioned by the U.S. Supreme Court.

But he hasn't come close to reducing unemployment to the levels his aides envisioned and predicted, poverty is at an all-time high, and the annual deficit has certainly not been cut in half.
Here's a short list of other, more specific promises compiled by PolitiFact:

• Establish a mortgage foreclosure prevention fund. (Deemed a "colossal failure" by a special inspector general.)

• Close the Guantanamo Bay detention camp. (Punted.)

• Create a cap-and-trade system with interim goals to reduce global warming. (Punted.)

• Sign the Employee Free Choice Act, making it easier to unionize. (Couldn't get a must-pass bill through a Democratic Congress.)

• Allow importation of prescription drugs. (Bargained away to big pharma.)

• Sign the Freedom of Choice Act, guaranteeing abortion rights against state legislative encroachments. (Never pushed it.)

• Include a "public option" in the health care plan. (Punted.)

• Bring in the dawn of a new bipartisan era. (Not.)

To that list, I would add one more failure: Public schools in general are not noticeably improving the education of students.

Perhaps lists such as these don't matter anymore. After all, most focus on expansions of federal power that the president was not able to achieve -- failures that Romney has no standing to criticize, given his conversion to Tea Party libertarianism.

It is true that Republicans have opposed the president at every turn, even though their truculence also exposed Obama's lack of deal-making skills.

As for Romney, he isn't making many specific promises, and the ones he is making tend to be of the negative variety: abolishing Obamacare, abolishing the Dodd-Frank bank regulation law, cutting tax rates, abolishing unspecified tax loopholes. His "promise" to "create 12 million jobs" is a laughable non-event, since that is the number of jobs the economy is predicted to produce over the next four years regardless of who is president.

But maybe voters, as cynical as they are these days, have just given up on expecting elected leaders to deliver on their promises. If that is so, how will voters decide whether a president deserves reelection -- or a challenger deserves to replace him?

It's not a promising development.

What Obama Promises To Do Next

Posted: 11/07/2012 1:44 pm EST Updated: 11/07/2012 4:11 pm EST

Dan Froomkin, Joe Van Brussel

WASHINGTON -- Now President Barack Obama has some promises to keep.

His 2012 campaign wasn't nearly as full of measurable commitments as his first one in 2008, but there were still plenty -- some of which are due in a matter of weeks, not months or years.

The most immediate deliverable -- and the one for which he has the clearest mandate -- is a tax hike for the rich.

Obama can deliver that fairly easily because the Bush tax cuts expire at the end of the year. Without doing anything, he can restore the top marginal tax rate to 39.6 percent, up from 35 percent, restore the estate tax, and raise the capital gains tax cap from 15 percent to 20 percent.

But in that process, Obama also has repeatedly vowed to strike what is often referred to as a "grand bargain" -- a bipartisan deal that would link tax increases for the rich to budget cuts, possibly involving Social Security, in order to start along the path to long-term deficit reduction.

In his victory speech early Wednesday morning, Obama restated his biggest promises. "In the coming weeks and months, I am looking forward to reaching out and working with leaders of both parties to meet the challenges we can only solve together: reducing our deficit; reforming our tax code; fixing our immigration system; freeing ourselves from foreign oil. We've got more work to do."

But there's no way for Obama to fulfill any of those major promises unless he gets House Republicans to go along. So he has essentially promised to deliver Republicans, starting very soon. 

Of course, he promised to do that in 2008, too.

Post inauguration, Obama's first big deliverable is comprehensive immigration reform providing a path to citizenship for undocumented immigrants. In September, Obama told a Miami audience that his inaction on immigration was the "biggest failure" of his first term. In October, he told the Des Moines Register, he is confident he can deliver because he has new leverage.

"Should I win a second term, a big reason I will win a second term is because the Republican nominee and the Republican Party have so alienated the fastest-growing demographic group in the country, the Latino community," he said. But his assumption -- that the GOP will realize it can't afford to keep its hard line position on immigration any longer -- is unproven.

Obama can keep some of his promises even with an obstructionist GOP if he's willing to take bold, unilateral steps that he shrank from in his first term. For instance, Obama has talked about addressing the continued housing crisis; the obvious next step would be to allow principal reductions for troubled borrowers whose mortgages are owned by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama is expected to start soon by firing acting Federal Housing Finance Agency Director Ed DeMarco.

Obama has promised to reduce air pollution and other environmental hazards, and a more muscular approach to agency rule-making could go a long way in that direction.

But if second-term Obama is focused on establishing a historic legacy, then he's going to have to take on the issue of climate change -- going far beyond the innovation agenda of his first term, and establishing some a carbon tax or emissions caps.

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney mocked Obama for having "promised to begin to slow the rise of the oceans” in 2008. Environmentalists, by contrast, are hoping the president will now act on that promise. The path to such an agreement is far from clear, however.

Similarly, it's hard to see how Obama can deliver on his most frequent campaign promises, which related to the middle class and job creation. Underlying those promises is his vow to invest in education, research, but most of all infrastructure -- and he can't do that without Congress.

In the same town hall where he discussed his failure to achieve immigration reform, Obama said "the most important lesson I’ve learned is that you can’t change Washington from the inside. You can only change it from the outside.” He seemed to be suggesting that the American public help him pressure Congress.

But it's not just Congress. Progressive activists have learned the hard way that Obama himself is best at keeping his own promises when he is held to them by organized and mobilized grassroots campaigns.

Here are some of the major promises made by the Obama 2012 campaign in ads, the Democratic Party platform, Obama's major speeches, debates, and other sources.

Middle class/Taxes

·                                 Return to Clinton-era tax rates for families earning above $250,000.

·                                 Give middle-class families and folks trying to get into the middle class some relief.

·                                 98 percent of families will not see a tax increase.

Job creation/Business/Manufacturing

·                                 Close loopholes that allow companies to deduct expenses when they export jobs.

·                                 Tax breaks for companies that are investing in the United States.

·                                 97 percent of small businesses will not see a tax increase.

·                                 Reduce corporate tax rate to 25 percent, while eliminating many deductions.

·                                 Create a million new manufacturing jobs in the next four years.

·                                 Help big factories and small businesses double their exports.

·                                 Invest in advanced manufacturing.

Energy/Gas/Environment

·                                 By the middle of the next decade, cars and trucks will go twice as far on a gallon of gas.

·                                 Open more land for oil-and-gas exploration.

·                                 Cut oil imports in half by 2020.

·                                 Develop new sources of energy in America.

·                                 Reduce carbon pollution.

Education

·                                 Hire 100,000 new math and science teachers.

·                                 Create 2 million more slots in our community colleges so people can get job training.

·                                 Cut tuition increases in half over 10 years.

Health care

·                                 When Obamacare is fully implemented, costs will go down.

·                                 Lower Medicare health care costs.

·                                 Improve benefits, cut payments to hospitals and other providers by $700 billion.

Deficit

·                                 Put U.S. on path to cut deficits by $4 trillion over 10 years.

Immigration

·                                 Pass comprehensive immigration reform.

·                                 Give young people a path to citizenship.

Foreign policy

·                                 Transition out of Afghanistan by end of 2014.

·                                 Iran will not get a nuclear weapon.

Gun control

·                                 Keep guns out of the hands of criminals and those who are mentally ill.

·                                 Increase enforcement of current laws.

·                                 Reintroduce assault weapons ban.

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Democrats Trash Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel while defending Obama

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In a stunning turn of events for a president used to getting his way from the media and fellow Democrats, President Obama reacted as an Ivy Leaguer whose judgment was questioned.  He conveniently hid behind the skirt of people like Nancy Pelosi and sent out a team of Democrats to bash the leader of Israel for speaking to Congress about the dangers of embracing Iran.

Democrats expressed shock at the warning from the Prime Minister about the dangers from Iran and accused him of lecturing congress about how to govern.  Excuse me, but as I recall the American public also has no faith in congress or the president governing so maybe someone should be lecturing congress on how to do business.

As the liberal news media races to stir the pot of controversy over the remarks, they seem to have forgotten that Obama has had a string of the worst foreign policy decisions we have seen from a president in a very long time.  Wake up media, and check your facts.

Obama called Putin and Russia a has been, tried to embrace North Korea, Iran, terrorist groups and others promising his policy of accommodation would win over our enemies.  Obama's foreign policy has failed in Iraq, failed in Afghanistan, failed with negotiations over Palestine statehood, failed in Benghazi, failed in Libya, and he is desperately scrambling to avoid failure in Iran.

Now the Democrats long took for granted that Jewish people were in their back pocket, and that may be ending.  The organized attack on the Prime Minister by Obama's Democrat clones from congress has driven a major dagger into the heart of the sweetheart arrangement between Israel and the United States.

As Netanyahu so successfully described, Israel has a 4,000 year history in the Persian gulf and has survived wave after wave of attempts to exterminate the Jewish people.  Our experience with Iran covers about 50 years and during that time Iran has imprisoned our embassy staff, thrown us out of the country, sponsored terrorist attacks on American military killing hundreds, and declared the United States and Israel enemies.

If the speech by the Prime Minister was political, it was because of the exaggerated response by the Obama administration to the invitation from the Republican leadership.  With the consistent scorn that Obama has demonstrated and the often nasty shots he said about the Republicans, what in the world did he expect from them?

Perhaps Nancy Pelosi said it best for the disgruntled Democrats when she said the Prime Minister insulted her with his speech.  Here are her words.

March 3, 2015 Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to Congress on Tuesday brought at least one lawmaker near to tears, and it wasn't for a good reason.


House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi said in a statment  that "as one who values the U.S.-Israel relationship and loves Israel," she was "near tears" throughout the speech because of Netanyahu's rhetoric. She was "saddened by the insult to the intelligence of the United States as part of the P5 +1 nations, and saddened by the condescension toward our knowledge of the threat posed by Iran and our broader commitment to preventing nuclear proliferation."
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Obamaville March 2 - Obama Mea Culpa Backfires

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President apologizes - six US soldiers & over 30 Afghans Murdered

In spite of claims to the contrary in which the President said his apology to the Afghan people over the inadvertent burning of a Quran holy book has helped ease the violence against American troops in Afghanistan, the facts speak volumes that he might have been wrong.

The Afghan people became aware on February 21 that US troops had burned a Quran the day before that was used to pass secret messages between terrorists in prison.  Two days later President Obama talked to Afghan President Hamid Karzai and had a letter hand delivered to Karzai the same day apologizing for the action by the American troops.

Before the day was over two American servicemen had been killed by a man in an Afghan army uniform in retaliation for the burning.  Today, nine days later, six American soldiers are dead and over 30 Afghans have been killed in violent riots against American troops.

Critics said Obama's apology was capitulation for actions that were justified and served to give already nervous Afghan people a reason to join the Taliban in trying to get the US out of Afghanistan.

With the President already announcing his intention to pull out of Afghanistan by 2014 the Afghan people feel they are being abandoned by the American president and people.  They believe the Taliban will overrun the country as soon as the Americans depart.

The war in Afghanistan is Obama's war, his signature is all over it.  He tripled the number of American troops fighting in Afghanistan and the US has already spent over $800 billion fighting the ten year war.  During that time 1,908 American soldiers have been killed.  The US has also given over $18 billion in aid to the Afghan government.

There is no sign the hatred will subside or the rioting and deaths will end.  Just yesterday Obama's Joint Chiefs of staff indicated support of Israel military action against the Muslim nation Iran, an act that may further aggravate heightened tension with Afghan.

Israel is pressing Obama for an explicit threat of military action against Iran if sanctions fail and Tehran's nuclear program advances beyond specified "red lines".

Diplomats say that Israel is angered by the Obama administration's public disparaging of early military action against Iran, saying that it weakens the prospect of Tehran taking the warnings from Israel seriously.

Just days before the Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, is scheduled to arrive in Washington to meet with Obama the Air Force Chief of Staff, General Norton Schwartz, said the Joint Chiefs of Staff have prepared military options to strike Iranian nuclear sites in the event of a conflict.

The Middle East Arab Israeli conflict has been fought over thousands of years and the Muslims have never lost sight of the fact that America is Israel's friend and protector.  As such suspicion between Arab nations and the United States continues unabated which was obvious during the recent Arab spring when countries overthrowing dictators and gaining freedom have moved away from the US and Israel.

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The Mysteries of North Korea Revealed - New Heir Introduced

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With one of the largest nuclear arsenals in Asia and at odds with the Obama Administration over a number of issues it is important we understand the nation of North Korea and the future leader of that powerful nemesis. This compilation of information using Korean and UK sources will help us know the people and leaders certain to be at the center of any foreign policy debates in the near future.

The new heir apparent as leader of North Korea is Kim Jong-un, a son of current leader Kim Jong Il. North Korea went to extremes to allow media access to the celebrations introducing Kim Jong-un including opening the Internet to their mysterious country and inviting western media for the first time.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) held a series of grand celebration activities in Pyongyang Sunday evening, celebrating the 65th anniversary of the ruling Workers' Party of Korea (WPK).

Kim Ki Nam, member of the Political Bureau and secretary of the Central Committee of the WPK, delivered a speech. "The grand evening gala is a festival of victory and glory in high praises of the immortal feats performed by the WPK," he said.

On the Kim Il Sung Square, there were nearly 100,000 Pyongyang citizens dressed in traditional costumes with flowers in their hands and forming various phalanxes. Fireworks of various shapes and colors burst against the sky.

The evening gala, named "Do Prosper, Era of Workers' Party" was made up of five parts, including "Glory to Mother Party," "Party of Comrade Kim Il Sung," "Country where Leader's Desire Has Come into Full Bloom," "Party is Guide of Victory" and the epilogue "Long Journey following General."

It represented the exploits of the WPK, which has made endeavors in economic construction and improving people's living standards in recent years and is a unique Korean-style gala which reflects the desire and sentiment of the Korean people, the KCNA, the DPRK's official news agency, said.

After the evening gala, a banquet was given by the Central Committee of the WPK at the People's Palace of Culture.

There were also splendid firework galas in Hamhung City, South Hamgyong Province and Kaesong City, North Hwanghae Province.

On Sunday morning, a grand military parade was held on the Kim Il Sung Square. The Korean People's Internal Security Forces, the Worker-Peasant Red Guards and the Young Red Guards took part in the parade. Kim Jong Il, accompanied by Kim Jong Un and other leaders of the DPRK's party and government, watched the parade.

After the parade, there was a military might show which showcased the DPRK's achievements in socialist construction and the DPRK people's love of the motherland, aspiration for reunification and hope for peace.

Until now, Kim Jong-un has been such a secretive figure that the world was not even sure of his existence until he was 20 years-old. The only mention of the younger Kim came in a biography by a Japanese sushi chef who had worked for the Kim household in Pyongyang.

The only other glimpse of the 28-year-old, who was promoted this week to a variety of key positions in the North Korean hierarchy, is a grainy video shot while he was a teenager at boarding school in Switzerland.

Although Kim Jong-il, 68, remains North Korea's leader, he has promoted his third son to be vice-chairman of the Central Military Committee and to be a four-star general. The move places the younger Kim squarely in position to succeed his father.

Leader Kim Jong-il likely to use Workers' party assembly to signal he is choosing youngest son Kim Jong-un as successor.
 

 

Justin McCurry guardian.co.uk
Tuesday 21 September 2010 18.34 BST

His grandfather is known as the Great Leader, his father as the Dear Leader. It seems only fair to confer a similar accolade on North Korea's dictator-in-waiting: the Phantom Leader, perhaps.

As the party that has ruled the secretive state for more than six decades prepares to anoint Kim Jong-un as its next leader at a rare gathering of cadres in the capital, Pyongyang, the world is still some way off establishing the facts about communism's crown prince.

So little is known about Kim Jong-un, the third and youngest son of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, that even the characters used to write his name and his date of birth are disputed. Aged 27 or 28, he was born to his father's "favourite consort," Ko Young-hee, a Japanese-born dancer who emigrated with her father in the 1960s. Shortly before her reported death from breast cancer in 2004, the state media began referring to her as the Respected Mother, confirming the theory that she is the closest the country has ever come to a first lady.

Like his elder brother, Kim Jong-chol, he received an expensive education under an assumed name in Switzerland. While his brother attended the International School of Berne, Kim Jong-un is thought to have gone to a school in nearby Liebefeld from 1996 to 2000. After rumours of the younger Kim's anointment began circulating last year, Ueli Studer, the town's director of education, would only confirm that a "North Korean youth" had been on the school's rolls. The pupil had been a speaker of English, German and French, Studer said, as well as "integrated, industrious and ambitious".

Kim Jong-un's expected appearance at the Korean Workers' party assembly next week, reportedly delayed because of concerns over Kim Jong-il's health, will offer the world the first verifiable images of the younger man. The main photograph in the public domain shows a cherubic, smiling 11-year-old with a predisposition for his father's chubbiness.

Now, he is the subject of a propaganda offensive aimed at securing him a place in the affections of the country's citizens amid signs that last year's disastrous currency revaluation and tough international sanctions are fuelling popular discontent with the regime.

The Daily NK, an anti-Kim online newspaper in Seoul, published an internal propaganda document praising Jong-un for his skill at organising a fireworks display and his expert handling of military vehicles. "He is a genius of geniuses," the document said. "He has been endowed by nature with special abilities. There is nobody on the planet who can defeat him in terms of faith, will and courage."

His induction into the personality cult surrounding North Korean's ruling dynasty has also been marked by the composition of poems and a song, Footsteps, extolling his virtues as a leader. His name is routinely prefixed by the titles Young General or Our Commander.

The authorities will distribute 10m portraits to be hung next to those of his father and grandfather in every home, factory and office once his succession is official. Every one of North Korea's 24 million people will be expected to wear a lapel badge bearing his likeness.

But what of his personality? The more generous accounts tell of a charismatic figure who honed his natural leadership skills during his five years at Kim Il-sung Military University in Pyongyang. Others say Kim Jong-un, who holds a mid-level position in the National Defence Commission, has inherited his father's mercilessness. "He is more engaging with other people, but then others say he can be cruel," says Ha Tae-keung, president of Open Radio for North Korea in Seoul. "He has already purged people in the defence commission he regards as opponents."

Kenji Fujimoto, Kim Jong-il's former Japanese sushi chef, confirms the image of the younger Kim as a chip off the old block, describing him as the "spitting image of his father in terms of face, body shape and personality".

In his bestselling 2003 account of his 11 years chez Kim, Fujimoto – the name is a nom de plume – recalled meeting a seven-year-old Kim Jong-un, who was dressed in a military uniform: "He glared at me with a menacing look when we shook hands. I can never forget the look in his eyes, which seemed to be saying, 'This is one despicable Japanese guy.'"

The older Kim Jong-un reportedly shares his father's interest in movies – the martial arts expert Jean-Claude van Damme is a favourite actor – can hold his drink and drives around the family's estate in a converted Mercedes.

The son is a keen basketball fan, says Fujimoto, who allowed his ideological mask to slip with his admiration for Michael Jordan, the US player.

Kim Jong-il thought Kim Jong-chul "too girlish" to become leader, while the eldest brother, Kim Jong-nam, ruled himself out when, much to his father's embarrassment, he was caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport in 2001, claiming he wanted to visit Disneyland in Tokyo.

The gap between Kim Jong-un's anointing and enthronement could be much shorter than the 14 years Kim Jong-il spent preparing for power, a wait that ended abruptly with the death of his father, North Korea's founder and "eternal president", Kim Il-sung, from a heart attack in 1994.

Given the state of Kim Jong-il's health, some observers believe the transition may be completed as early as 2012, the centenary of Jong-il's father's birth, and a year the official media are referring to as a defining moment in the country's history. "Kim Jong-il doesn't look like he'll be around 10 years from now," says Bradley Martin, author of a seminal book on the Kim dynasty, Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader. "Some reports say that he feels pretty low and has a reason to name his successor."The two-day party congress has twice been postponed this month, adding to speculation that Kim Jong-il, who suffered a stroke two years ago, is too weak to attend.

Next week, Kim Jong-un's rise to the upper echelons of the Workers' party is unlikely to be met with universal approval. "It is hard to know what the other party elites have in mind," says Ha, who says he has sources inside the North Korean military and ruling party. Recent reports speculated that disquiet among political and military elites over Kim's choice of successor was the real reason behind the meeting's delay.

"Officially they have to support Jong-un, or they risk being executed," says Ha. "But some are worried, particularly older members who have been loyal to Kim Jong-il, and wonder how his son will treat them."

Confirmation that North Korea has begun the transition to a third member of the Kim dynasty will come with Kim Jong-un's expected elevation to senior posts in the Workers' party, including that of secretary of the feared organisation and guidance department, which monitors senior officials. "If he gets that position he will be at the party's centre and able to pick and choose his minions," says Martin.

Under Kim Jong-un, many analysts expect a continuation of the current military-first policy and, despite the country's frequent dalliances with economic meltdown and pressure for reform from China, absolute adherence to central planning.

As he confronts his own mortality and surveys the impoverished, isolated state he has ruled for 16 years, Kim Jong-il's apparent choice of heir sits easily with the gross egotism of a man who is desperate to ensure it lives on in his image, whatever the economic, social and diplomatic costs.

"Kim Jong-il chose Jong-un because he reminds him most of himself," says Martin. "Some people have high hopes for change because he was educated abroad, but so were Arab oil sheikhs, and it didn't turn them into liberal democrats. He was chosen because to be a good dictator, you have to be a mean son of a bitch."
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