Reported from North Korea's Central News Agency. Quite the year for dictators. It will be interesting to see what happens now in Asia and if Kim Jong-Un has the loyalty of the military. A full-scale collapse of the North Korean government is something feared by both South Korea and China. Tens of millions of malnourished, brainwashed people flooding across the DMZ and the Chinese border would be bad, not to mention what would happen to their weapons. I'm sure we'll see some pretty demented mass hysteria out of Pyongyang, much like when Kim Il-Sung died. What happens after that will be huge from a geo-political standpoint.
Obama only carried out Bush's cunning plan to feed him rich, flavorful food and the finest cognac for decades. Come on basso, we all know this.
This will be pretty interesting in the short-run for East Asian stability. The thing about North Korea is that it was a pretty hermetic state in that it had it's disagreements but most policy was directed domestically. It will be interesting to see how his son will succeed him in the party or what the next steps are.
Reported he died from heart attack due to over-work while traveling on a train. I suppose it takes a lot of work to put a very capable people into a hell. I hope this is an end of the horrific for the NK people. They deserve better. After Mao died, Deng soon seized the power from Mao's appointed heir Hua Guofeng and pulled China away from all the ideological non-sense. Let's hope the same will happen to NK now.
Seoul's stock exchange is going haywire right now. From I what read, looks like the army is under Il's brother in law's tight control. Hope nothing crazy will happen. They are a nuclear country.
it's all over the market news--- Marketwatch has it in HUGE bold letters. All major Asian markets down hard. (1.5%-2.5% range). It'll be interesting to see if it transfers to Europe. DAX, FTSE and CAC have all been weak, and could strain at the sight of any bad news. If Eurozone worries coincide with Asian slowdown, and instability, we could be in for a hell of a ride next year.
The selling in South Korea probably will be going on for as long as more news coming out of NK that they are not intent to do something crazy to SK. Hopefully, the worldwide market remains sane during that time. It's highly unlikely China will allow NK to attack SK for the fear of exact this, which is fortunate. China got even worried about Greece, a country generally has nothing to do with China, stability for China's economic well-being.
However it's possible a high rank military general or generals instigates a coup. The key to NK's future lie with the army right now.
If the deaths of the famous and infamous come in threes, this has been a pretty heavy series: Christopher Hitchens Vaclav Havel Kim Jong-Il
one of those is not like the others. this country could use a Havel right now. contrast Havel's eloquent dictum: "We cannot blame the previous rulers for everything...because it would blunt the duty that each of us faces today" with His Adolescency's daily affirmation: "it's Bush's fault!"
