Kim Jong-il Dies: Power Passes to Third Generation

Kim Jong-il died in December 2011 on his private train, according to the North Korean government, which announced it two days later. He had ruled North Korea since 1994, when he succeeded his father Kim Il-sung. His regime presided over a famine in the mid-1990s that killed somewhere between 240,000 and 3.5 million people, the range reflecting how little outsiders could verify. He accelerated the country's nuclear program, met with South Korean President Kim Dae-jung in 2000 in the only inter-Korean summit of his era, and maintained a regime with no free press, no political opposition, and no legal emigration. Power passed to his youngest son Kim Jong-un. Born Yuri Irsenovich Kim in 1941 in the Soviet Union, where his father was living in exile, Kim Jong-il was raised in the mythology of the Korean revolution and groomed for succession from the 1970s onward. He oversaw the regime's propaganda apparatus before taking full control, developing a cult of personality that credited him with supernatural abilities. His personal life was lavish: a wine cellar worth reportedly $800,000 per year, personal chefs flown to Tokyo for sushi training, and a film library of 20,000 movies. He kidnapped South Korean director Shin Sang-ok and his wife to make films for the North Korean cinema industry. The famine that devastated North Korea from 1994 to 1998 was caused by the collapse of Soviet aid, catastrophic agricultural policies, and the regime's refusal to accept international assistance until starvation was already widespread. His nuclear weapons program produced the country's first nuclear test in 2006.