Immediately after Kim Jong-il’s death was announced, the North Korean state media made it clear that Jong-un was the successor: “At the forefront of our revolution, there is our comrade Kim Jong-un standing as the great successor … ” Pyongyang residents mourn the death of their leader, Kim Jong-il, in December 2011. In response to the death, South Korea convened a National Security Council meeting as the country put its military and civil defense on high alert, Japan set up a crisis management team, and the White House issued a statement saying that it was “in close touch with our allies in South Korea and Japan.” Back in Langley, I remember being watchful for any indications of instability, as I began to develop my thinking on what was happening and where North Korea might be headed under the newly named leader. There had been signs before 2011 that Kim was grooming his son for the succession: he began to accompany his father on publicized inspections of military units, his birth home was designated a historical site, and he began to assume leadership titles and roles in the military, party, and security apparatus, including as a four-star general in 2010. News of these events began to filter out to the international media through cell phones that had been smuggled in before Kim Jong-il’s death. While North Koreans wept, fainted, and convulsed with grief, feigned or not, Kim Jong-un, the twenty-something-year-old son of Kim Jong-il, reportedly closed the country’s borders and declared a state of emergency. His father and founder of the country Kim Il-sung had also died of a heart attack in 1994. Everyone knew that Kim had heart issues-he had suffered a stroke in 2008-and that the day would probably come when his family’s history of heart disease and his smoking, drinking, and partying would catch up with him. When North Korean state media reported in December 2011 that leader Kim Jong-il had died at the age of 70 of a heart attack from “overwork,” I was a relatively new analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency.
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