South Korea’s Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) has today Placed placed all military units on emergency alert following the news of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s death on Saturday.
South Korea’s officials said they may raise the “Defcon,” a five-stage combat alert level, from its current level of four to three, and may also increase the Watchcon, an anti-North Korea surveillance alert, from three to two. Watchcon two signifies a state of emergency with indications of a vital threat from North Korea.
According to the JCS, the Master Control and Report Center (MCRC) at Osan Air Base, south of Seoul, which handles aerial monitoring and analysis, plans to ask for reinforcement by both South Korean and U.S. forces.
Kim Jong-il died on Saturday of a heart attack aged 69. According to hagiographic official accounts, Kim Jong-Il was born on February 16, 1942 at Mount Paekdu, a sacred site to Koreans.
However, independent experts say his birthplace was actually a guerrilla camp in Russia, from where his father was fighting Japanese forces who had colonised the Korean peninsula.
He suffered a stroke in August 2008. Some reports say he also suffered from kidney failure which required dialysis, diabetes and high blood pressure.
Kim defied widespread predictions of regime collapse as the communist state’s command economy wilted under its own contradictions and Soviet aid dried up in the early 1990s.
In the mid- to late-1990s Kim presided over a famine that by some estimates killed one million — but he still found resources to continue a nuclear weapons programme culminating in tests in October 2006 and May 2009.
North Korea regime faces increasing pressure from sanctions over its nuclear and missile programmes and the parlous state of the economy. But the late leader’s state of health accelerated a perilous succession.
Kim Jong-Il inherited power from his father Kim Il-Sung, the 100th anniversary of whose birth comes next year in another flashpoint date that has US and South Korean analysts watching on nervously.
Leave a Reply