Kim Jong-Il assumed power after the death of his father Kim Il-Sung in 1994, at the height of North Korea's confrontation with the United States over Pyongyang's nuclear-weapons programme, and just as the country was about to plunge into a devastating famine. It was not an auspicious time to become North Korea's supreme leader.
The younger Kim was then 42 years old, and had been preparing for his succession since his 20s. After his graduation from Kim Il-Sung University in 1964, Kim rose through the ranks of the ruling Korean Workers' Party, focusing on culture and propaganda. He enjoyed film and the arts, fine food and drink, and kept late hours - and he even candidly admitted to a conference of party workers in 1996 that economics was never his strong suit. But though he lacked the charisma and outgoing personality of his father, he was not the unstable and intellectually vacuous playboy of South Korean propaganda; foreign leaders who met him - including South Korea's president Kim Dae-Jung, Japanese prime minister Junichiro Koizumi, and US secretary of state Madeleine Albright - described him as intelligent, well-informed, even charming.
