Kim Jong Il

Kim Jong Il (born February 16, 1941, Siberia, Russia, U.S.S.R.—died December 17, 2011) was the ruler of North Korea from 1994 to 2011. He succeeded his father, Kim Il-Sung, who became the first premier of the newly formed Democratic People’s Republic of Korea in 1948 and remained its leader until his death in 1994.

Birth, education, and early role in government

The official North Korean version of Kim Jong Il’s life diverges from what historians and journalists outside of North Korea have documented about his life. According to North Korea’s account, Kim was born on February 16, 1942, at a guerrilla base camp on Mount Paektu, the highest point on the Korean peninsula; Soviet archives and other sources indicate that he was born a year earlier, on February 16, 1941, in Siberia, where his father was training with Soviet military authorities. North Korea’s official biography attributes many precocious abilities to Kim Jong Il, and it claims his birth was accompanied by such auspicious signs as the appearance of a double rainbow in the sky.

More From Britannica

North Korea: North Korea under Kim Jong Il

During the Korean War (1950–53), Kim was placed in safety in northeastern China (Manchuria) by his father, although North Korea’s official biography does not mention this episode. After attending a pilots’ training college in East Germany for two years, he graduated in 1963 from Kim Il-Sung University.

Kim served in numerous routine posts in the Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) before becoming his father’s secretary. He worked closely with his father in the 1967 party purge and then was assigned several important jobs. Kim was appointed in September 1973 to the powerful position of party secretary in charge of organization, propaganda, and agitation.

Leader of North Korea

Kim was officially designated his father’s successor in October 1980, was given command of the armed forces in 1990–91, and held high-ranking posts on the Central Committee, in the Politburo, and in the Party Secretariat. When Kim Il-Sung died of a heart attack in 1994, Kim Jong Il became North Korea’s de facto leader.

He was named chairman of the KWP in October 1997, and in September 1998 he formally assumed the country’s highest post. Since the position of president had been eliminated by the Supreme People’s Assembly, which reserved for Kim Il-Sung the posthumous title of “eternal president,” the younger Kim was reelected chairman of the National Defense Commission, an office whose powers were expanded.

Special 67% offer for students! Finish the semester strong with Britannica.

Learn More

During his leadership of the country, Kim further embellished the ideology developing around the newly established Kim dynasty, and he reinforced the country’s reputation as a “hermit kingdom.” Conflicting information circulated regarding his personal life, most of it unreliable and—likely deliberately—serving to increase the opacity around his actions.

It was known that Kim took an interest in the arts and encouraged greater creativity in literature and film, although the products remained primarily propaganda tools. A known film buff, Kim headed a movie studio before ascending to the country’s leadership. It produced works celebrating socialist values, Kim Il-Sung and his national policy of self-reliance (juche), and, later, Kim Jong Il himself and his “military first” (sŏngun chŏngch’i) policy. As part of his desire to create better films, in the late 1970s the younger Kim had a South Korean film director, Shin Sang-Ok, and his wife, actress Choi Eun-Hee, abducted to the North, where they were pressed into service until their 1986 escape.

Talks with South Korea and the question of North Korea’s nuclear status

After becoming North Korea’s leader, Kim faced a struggling national economy and a famine that, by some estimates, killed 2.5 million people. This situation motivated him to amend North Korea’s long-standing policy of isolationism, and so, throughout the late 1990s and early 21st century, Kim sought to improve ties with a number of countries. In addition, he appeared to be abiding by the terms of a 1994 agreement (called the Agreed Framework) with the United States in which North Korea would dismantle its own nuclear program in return for arranging for the construction by an outside party of two nuclear reactors capable of producing electric power. South Korea was the primary contractor on the project.

Kim halted testing of a long-range missile in 1999 after the United States agreed to ease its economic sanctions against North Korea, and in June 2000 Kim met with South Korean leader Kim Dae-Jung. In what was the first summit between leaders of the two countries, an agreement was reached to take steps toward reunification. Ties were also established with Australia and Italy. For the United States, South Korea, and Japan, maintaining regional peace and seeking improvements in North Korea’s human rights situation were reasons for keeping diplomatic channels open with Kim’s North Korea.

At the same time, however, the Agreed Framework began falling apart in the face of North Korea’s demonstrated reluctance to adhere to its terms. Relations with the United States deteriorated greatly in 2002, after U.S. Pres. George W. Bush characterized Kim’s regime (along with Iran and Iraq) as part of an “axis of evil.” It was suspected that North Korea was enriching uranium at one of the nuclear facilities whose activities were supposedly frozen by the terms of the Agreed Framework. In January 2003 Kim announced that North Korea was pulling out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and planning to develop nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s nuclear status remained an international issue. Kim’s regime was widely seen as using it as a negotiating point to secure economic aid and to deter the escalation of tensions with South Korea, which were ongoing. In October 2006 the country announced that it had conducted an underground test of such a weapon. Talks were suspended for several years, but another deal was struck in 2007; the verification of North Korea’s compliance, however, remained unsettled.

The December 2007 election of Lee Myung-Bak as South Korean president began another deterioration in inter-Korean relations as Lee took a harder line with his North Korean counterpart. Over the next few years North Korea conducted occasional weapons tests, including a second underground nuclear test in May 2009.

Relations between North and South reached a crisis point several times—notably in 2010, with the sinking of the South Korean warship Ch’ŏnan (Cheonan) near the maritime border in March and a November military skirmish on Yŏnpyŏng (Yeongpyeong) Island, in the same area, that killed two South Korean marines.

Declining health and death

In 2008 speculation began that Kim’s health was deteriorating; after his absence from public view for several months, it was suspected that he had suffered a stroke. The following year Kim and the North Korean political establishment began a series of moves apparently toward designating Kim’s youngest son, Kim Jong-Un, as his successor.

North Korean state media announced on December 19, 2011, that Kim had died on a train two days earlier. Kim Jong-Un was declared the country’s supreme leader.