SEOUL, Sept. 29 (Yonhap) -- North Korea installed its leader's youngest son in powerful political posts during the country's biggest party convention in decades, official media said Wednesday, as widely anticipated after Kim Jong-un debuted earlier this week as a four-star general.
Kim, believed to be 28 at most, was named a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission of the Workers' Party, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in reports monitored in Seoul.
The reports said Ri Yong-ho, chief of the general staff of the Korean People's Army, has been elected as the other vice chairman of the commission that is headed by Kim Jong-il, the country's 68-year-old leader who has apparently accelerated his hereditary succession plan since he suffered a stroke in 2008.
Little is known about Kim Jong-un, who was also named Tuesday as a member of the party's Central Committee, which the North has repeatedly stressed this year must be "protected with life."
His swift rise to power signaled the start of what would be the communist world's first back-to-back father-to-son power transfer. Kim Jong-il inherited the country from his father Kim Il-sung who died of heart failure in 1994.
"As a vice chairman of the Central Military Commission, Kim Jong-un will strengthen his grip on the military" that operates 1.2 million troops and forms the basis of the Kim dynasty's power, Yang Moo-jin, an expert at the University of North Korean Studies, said.
But Kim Jong-un was not included among the newly elected standing members of the Political Bureau of the party, suggesting he had some work ahead of him to complete the succession plan.
In a reshuffle apparently aimed at assisting the power transfer, Kim Kyoung-hui, the 64-year-old sister of Kim Jong-il, also became a member of the Central Committee, the KCNA said, adding that her powerful husband, Jang Song-thaek, became a member of the Central Military Commission.
Jang is already a vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, whose decisions have overridden most of those of any other organ in the country since Kim Jong-il seized power.
Kim made his sister, who oversees the North's light industries, a four-star general on Monday along with his third son, whose two older brothers have apparently fallen out of favor over the years.
Ri, who was promoted to the rank of vice marshal this week, rose as a standing member of the Political Bureau along with three others, including Jo Myong-rok, a vice marshal who visited the United States as a special envoy in 2000.
Kim heads all of the organizations that were affected in the Workers' Party convention of top delegates held in Pyongyang this week.
"The Conference marked a significant occasion that demonstrated the revolutionary faith and will of all the party members, servicepersons and people," the KCNA said, calling on them to continue to uphold the military-first policy chartered by Kim.
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Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un from left |
samkim@yna.co.kr
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