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From: C-afp@clari.net (AFP)
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Subject: North Korea's "crown prince" shown by Japanese TV
Organization: Copyright 1999 by Agence France-Presse (via ClariNet)
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Date: Mon, 15 Feb 1999 6:34:37 PST
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   TOKYO, Feb 15 (AFP) - Rare photographs of North Korea's "crown  
prince" Kim Jong-nam were shown by Japanese television on Monday on 
the eve of the 57th birthday of his father supreme leader Kim 
Jong-Il. 
   Several pictures of Kim Jong-Nam were shown by Nippon Television  
Corp. (NTV), which also featured an exclusive interview with Ri 
Nam-Ok, an adopted daughter of the reclusive "Great Leader." 
   NTV said Ri was "in exile" but did not give more details.  
   Ri said in English the supreme leader's eldest son, 27, who  
spent several years with her studying at school in Geneva, was like 
his father. "He is very loyal to his father, to the country," she 
said. 
   Like his father, the younger Kim is rarely seen in public. He  
looked chubby like his father and was pictured smiling in most of 
the pictures. One of them showed him with Ri posing in navy uniforms 
in the port city of Wonson in 1987, when he was 16. 
   Two other pictures showed the two together in 1988, one was in  
Geneva and the other in the suburbs of Pyongyang when they were 
hunting. 
   The younger Kim posed with a shotgun in his arm, attesting to a  
taste for firearms he has developed by following his father on 
hunting trips, the programme said. 
   The junior Kim was presumed to have been elected to North  
Korea's parliament, the Supreme People's Assembly, last July. A man 
with the same name was among its new 687 deputies. 
   And he is the presumed political heir to his father, who  
completed the communist world's first dynastic succession after Kim 
Il-Sung died in July 1994. 
   Kim Jong-Il, the eldest son of North Korea's founding father,  
was anointed successor when he was 31. He was finally confirmed as 
paramount leader when reappointed -- with boosted powers -- as head 
of the National Defence Commission last September. 
   It took four years after the death of Kim Il-Sung for the  
bespectacled, bouffon-haired Kim Jong-il to complete his ascension 
to all top state and party posts. 
   Jong-Il has been the supreme commander of the armed forces since  
late 1991 and was appointed general secretary of the ruling Workers 
Party in late 1997. 
   He is believed to have eight children by a number of marriages  
but most of them were little known outside his family circle, 
according to analysts. 
   His eldest son went to study for several years at the Geneve  
school with Ri when he was 10 years old. 
   "We were very spoiled," Ri recalled, adding that Jong-Nam was a  
"very isolated child." 
   "His father tried to compensate all of this by giving him all he  
could offer him." 
   The place and time of the interview with Ri in exile were not  
disclosed to protect her safety. 
   Kim Jong-Nam went to study in Geneva when he was 16 -- adopting  
a false idenity as a son of the North Korean ambassador. 
   "He was well versed in philosophy," a teacher recalled of the  
North Korean guest student. "He was always smiling like this," he 
added, pointing to one of the pictures. 
  	   	

