Kim Jong-il has passed away

[Applejack]

North Korean leader Kim Jong-il has died at the age of 69, state-run television has announced.

Mr Kim, who has led the communist nation since the death of his father in 1994, died on a train while visiting an area outside the capital, the announcement said.

He suffered a stroke in 2008 and was absent from public view for months.

His designated successor is believed to be his third son, Kim Jong-un, who is thought to be in his late 20s.

The BBC's Lucy Williamson in Seoul says Mr Kim's death will cause huge shock waves across North Korea.

The announcement came in an emotional statement read out on national television.

The announcer, wearing black, said he had died of physical and mental over-work.

South Korea says its military has been put on alert following the announcement and its National Security Council is convening for an emergency meeting, Yonhap news agency reports.

North Korean media has reported that long-time leader Kim Jong-Il died.

State television reported on Monday that he died on Saturday and the announcer said the cause was "physical and mental over-work".

The official news agency KCNA said Kim died on board a train during one of his field trips outside the capital of the communist country.

Meanwhile, the Yonhap news agency said the South Korean military has been placed on emergency alert, as shares on the stock market in Seoul fell nearly five per cent.

South Korea's presidential Blue House has also called an emergency National Security Council meeting.

Reclusive 'dear leader'

Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but appeared relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state media.

The leader, reputed to have had a taste for cigars, cognac and gourmet cuisine, was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease.

The news comes as North Korea prepares for a hereditary succession. In September 2010, Kim Jong Il unveiled his third son, the twenty-something Kim Jong-Un, as his successor, putting him in high-ranking posts.

"Just a couple of days ago, it was publicised that he was visiting a military installation," Don Kirk of the Christian Science Monitor told Al Jazeera.

"Obviously there will be a long period of pubilc mourning in the country, but the sense is that at least he organised his succession with [his son] Kim Jong-Un taking over."

"The country looks stable, but whether it will remain stable is not clear," he said.

Kim, 69, took power in 1994 upon the death of his father, Kim Il-Sung, the first leader of the country.

Pyongyang is due to celebrate the milestone 100th birthday of Kim Il-Sung in April 2012.


I guess death does come in threes.

[Irving1992]

So much for his claim of being a god. Later.

[Rainbow Dash]

It's great that he's dead, but things are going to get volatile in North Korea. To a lot of the people of North Korea, it really IS like a God just died. Between the panic in the minds of the people and the power hungry generals who have been waiting for this moment for years... we'll probably see a regime change in the next year or two.

[Chicken Little]

Dislike the man sure, but that's just bullshit to say this is great news.

[Rainbow Dash]

Do you mean "No it's wrong for any human to die ;_;" or "North Korea is more fucked with him dead than alive"?

Cuz if you mean the latter, I can see your point but still disagree.

If you mean the former, his life is what's been keeping millions of people from truly living and thinking for themselves, not to mention the people he'd kidnapped and/or killed regularly. The world is better off without him.

[Miles]

I'm not really one to keep up with World News. I barely keep up with local city news!
But every time I heard about this guy, he sounded like a complete monster so I'm not really bothered that he's dead.

[Chicken Little]

Do you mean "No it's wrong for any human to die ;_;" or "North Korea is more fucked with him dead than alive"?

The third option "you're a biased fuckstick with a predisposition to hate anything that's not kissing your arse so show a modicum of respect for someone that may be misrepresented in biased media by not dancing on his fucking grave immediately"

I've not met the man nor visited the Korean peninsular to know if what the western world is feeding me about him is fact, truth or an agenda dressed up. So I am instead treating the man as a nationalist for his country.

If you mean the former, his life is what's been keeping millions of people from truly living and thinking for themselves, not to mention the people he'd kidnapped and/or killed regularly. The world is better off without him.

Every government does the same thing to control the masses that is public opinion, politics is a beast that feeds of such things and democracies the institution that promote their growth and consumption. Merely because this was different, foreign or unknown to you and you find it odd does not mean it is right or wrong, but that it just is and was.

The world is a funny place, it would have been a better place without Germany, without Russia, without the USA, without Japan, without China and where would the world be today without either of these countries because atone time or another they decided to fuck with their populace, repress them, fuck with other nations and declare war to enforce their moral codes upon them? Yet these countries aren't run by evil people nor are they inherently evil, this just happened decades, even centuries ago that when people see the same exact thing they assume it's a new invention and not just human nature repeating itself.

His life has brought as much good to North Korea as it has bad, because North Korea still exists, her people still exist there, they still work for North Korea, and who the fuck are we to tell them they're wrong and should want to be consumed by greed to obtain and consume everything they can to get ahead of everyone else? Who are we to say "fuck your neighbour, buy a bigger plasma to show him the fuck up"?

You see one side of a man and you judge him because of that one side you are merely seeing a fraction of what he has done, what he could do or where he was headed and you judge him unfairly.

[Rainbow Dash]

Not sure what kind of information you think I've been exposed to, or why yours is any better. But I've researched North Korea, extensively, and I don't mean "I saw a thing about it on fox news." I've seen the propaganda videos, I've seen the documentaries. I've heard an account of a escaped prisoner who was going through re-education/torture. The country is literally as bad as 1984. I don't get what's so damn immoral about wanting to help the millions of people who are suffering in there, nor in celebrating the death of a person who's killed or tortured an undetermined number of his own people.

His life has brought as much good to North Korea as it has bad, because North Korea still exists, her people still exist there, they still work for North Korea, and who the fuck are we to tell them they're wrong?
People with educated opinions, presumably.

[Snips]

Honestly, I mirror Yvl's sentiments to the letter.

I've done a lot of research and seen a lot of documentaries myself. One especially chilling one, to me, was where North Korean spies in Japan were kidnapping Japanese men and women to bring back to North Korea to learn their mannerisms, because they even do simple things like washing their face differently. In their attempts to infiltrate Japanese society, they even captured a 12 or 13 year old girl, who was set aside to be a tutor to Kim's son. After intense political pressure, about years and years later, the prisoners were finally allowed to return home, but a large number of them had committed suicide (That girl among them, after having a daughter over there.) I was able to ask a Japanese friend of mine about it, and it was rather high profile a few years back.

That right there was my wake up call that started my actual research instead of just believing what I saw on TV, because I know what people say about North Korea and I wanted to know more for myself rather than just believe what I was told.

So yeah. Although I believe this man was rotten, I also believe his presence was the cause of stability in his government. With him gone, so many others will see their chance to try to sieze power. Do you think veteran military generals, among others, will want to be ruled by a 20 year old? Oh hell no, old people don't stand for that. We will see revolt, it might even become full scale civil war. At the very least, the transition won't be as smooth as to happen without a hitch at all, even if they bide their time and wait a few years before making a move.

[Chicken Little]

Not sure what kind of information you think I've been exposed to, or why yours is any better. But I've researched North Korea, extensively, and I don't mean "I saw a thing about it on fox news." I've seen the propaganda videos, I've seen the documentaries. I've heard an account of a escaped prisoner who was going through re-education/torture. The country is literally as bad as 1984. I don't get what's so damn immoral about wanting to help the millions of people who are suffering in there, nor in celebrating the death of a person who's killed or tortured an undetermined number of his own people.

Why is it that when I say western world my own country is immediately removed from the pool? Just because we may play with ourselves geographically doesn't mean we don't jump into bed with northern efforts to fuck everything up, it's an inclusive statement that you're not seeing the opposing viewpoint that the man did anything beneficial to anyone, he was just an evil totalitarian dictator who punched kittens and anyone with a fraction of common sense knows there's a contrast because a single man cannot be entirely wrong and entirely evil just as he cannot be the sole reason for the suffering of thousands because enforcement of is impossible logistically without aid.

But no of course you've researched, with such a great track record of looking at anything socialist in nature without closing your eyes and going "lalalala fucking commy bastards"

People with educated opinions, presumably.

People growing up in the trees tend to only look up. You say educated, I say ignorant self obsessed wankers.

How many Western nations have people living on streets, void of human rights, how many in their history have wholesale slaughtered or engaged in illegal actions to push an agenda or thrown weight around to get their agenda, how many have engaged in warfare to push it and impacted several nations in the process, taken sides in conflict on the basis of "interest" and how many are callous towards the loss of life as a political tool to push an agenda at home?

The sentiment there is fuck muslims because a small fraction of them were extremist on your land so you find distrust a shield against further affronts by the populace, the sentiment here is fuck immigrants because people smugglers are overloading leaky boats sending them our way and going "enjoy the clean up" no refugees no dead bodies floating around and no issue affecting Oceania, just like no muslims equates to no initial terror that became the fuel for violence in the name of progress in the Middle East.

But job done, a small portion of the population of a multinational organisation was thwarted, great job team us!

The difference is that we have more people thinking we're right than wrong because we;re surrounded by things and people feeding we're doing the right thing that we believe them.

A case in point, there's a documentary running on a station here, one man going along the amazon to highlight the cultures of people who lived off it and the impact of foreign investment in killing their culture off or dragging them into the modernisation phase. This is biased because you don't hear from the oil companies, from the forestry industries, from the western world, it is hut off from your consumption to form an opinion on because all you hear are the villagers from those tribes and those that became employed by these branches. So the overall tone is to of course hate their encroachment, hate what they've done to the tribes, what they're trying to do and hate what they're doing to the ecosystem there.

But you ask that man and he'll be on the fence, as both do wrong. One over fishes and threatens species, the other pollutes and threatens species, one is worried about natural predators, the other is worried about man made predators, the difference is superficial based on a predisposition one goes into these things with.

It's the same thing with politics and people associated. If it's not you and yours you're against it, you don't want to understand it because it's not worth understanding, and if you hate the person at the head then you hate the body because the head is important as it governs intelligence to you. Despite the fact that the body is the primarily worker of the two.

Like I said before, you can have the opinion, but all of us are being fed one side of a story.

[Rainbow Dash]

But no of course you've researched, with such a great track record of looking at anything socialist in nature without closing your eyes and going "lalalala fucking commy bastards"
Who are you talking to? When have I ever said anything remotely like that?

In any case, I'm far too busy tending to my cattle and wearing my cowboy hats to listen to some unAmerican foreigner. I'm done here.

[Seraph Zero]

I seriously doubt his death will cause any sort of real change. It was my understanding that, during the last few years of his life, his health was so far deteriorated that he was kept around as nothing more than a figurehead, any power he once had being transferred to his heir and advisers, and what a change we saw after he had that stroke!

Wait, we did see a change, right...? No...? Hmm, just venturing a guess, but the death of "Dear Leader" ain't gonna change much in the great Red East.