Kim Jong Il, also spelled Kim Chong Il, (born February 16, 1941, Siberia, Russia, U.S.S.R.—died December 17, 2011), North Korean politician, son of the former North Korean premier and (communist) Korean Workers’ Party (KWP) chairman Kim Il-Sung, and successor to his father as ruler (1994–2011) of North Korea.

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The official North Korean version of Kim Jong Il’s life, different from the biography documented elsewhere, says that he was born at a guerrilla base camp on Mount Paektu, the highest point on the Korean peninsula; it attributes many precocious abilities to him; and it claims his birth was accompanied by such auspicious signs as the appearance of a double rainbow in the sky. During the Korean War (1950–53) he was placed in safety in northeastern China (Manchuria) by his father, although the official biography does not mention the episode. After attending a pilots’ training college in East Germany for two years, he graduated in 1963 from Kim Il-Sung University. He served in numerous routine posts in the KWP before becoming his father’s secretary. He worked closely with his father in the 1967 party purge and then was assigned several important jobs. Kim was appointed in September 1973 to the powerful position of party secretary in charge of organization, propaganda, and agitation.

Kim was officially designated his father’s successor in October 1980, was given command of the armed forces in 1990–91, and held high-ranking posts on the Central Committee, in the Politburo, and in the Party Secretariat. When Kim Il-Sung died of a heart attack in 1994, Kim Jong Il became North Korea’s de facto leader. He was named chairman of the KWP in October 1997, and in September 1998 he formally assumed the country’s highest post. Since the position of president had been eliminated by the Supreme People’s Assembly, which reserved for Kim Il-Sung the posthumous title of “eternal president,” the younger Kim was reelected chairman of the National Defense Commission, an office whose powers were expanded.

During his leadership of the country, Kim built on the mystique already surrounding his father and himself. Conflicting information circulated regarding his personal life, most of it unreliable and—perhaps deliberately—serving to add to the mystery. It was known that Kim took an interest in the arts and encouraged greater creativity in literature and film, although the products remained primarily propaganda tools. A well-known film buff, Kim headed a movie studio before ascending to the country’s leadership. It produced works celebrating socialist values, Kim Il-Sung and his national policy of self-reliance (juche), and, later, Kim Jong Il himself and his “military first” (sŏngun chŏngch’i) policy. As part of his desire to create better films, in the late 1970s the younger Kim had a South Korean film director, Shin Sang-Ok, and his wife, actress Choi Eun-Hee, abducted to the North, where they were pressed into service until their 1986 escape.

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After becoming North Korea’s leader, and with his country facing a struggling economy and a famine, Kim made moves toward amending North Korea’s long-standing policy of isolationism. Throughout the late 1990s and early 21st century, Kim sought to improve ties with a number of countries. In addition, he appeared to be abiding by the terms of a 1994 agreement (called the Agreed Framework) with the United States in which North Korea would dismantle its own nuclear program in return for arranging for the construction by an outside party of two nuclear reactors capable of producing electric power. South Korea was the primary contractor on the project.

Kim halted testing of a long-range missile in 1999 after the United States agreed to ease its economic sanctions against North Korea, and in June 2000 Kim met with South Korean leader Kim Dae-Jung. In what was the first summit between leaders of the two countries, an agreement was reached to take steps toward reunification. Ties were also established with Australia and Italy.

Kim Dae-Jung and Kim Jong Il South Korean President Kim Dae-Jung (left) with North Korean leader Kim Jong Il in P'yŏngyang, North Korea, on June 15, 2000, after concluding a three-day summit. © Yonhap—Epa/REX/Shutterstock.com

At the same time, however, the Agreed Framework began falling apart in the face of North Korea’s demonstrated reluctance to adhere to its terms. Relations with the United States deteriorated greatly in 2002, after U.S. Pres. George W. Bush characterized Kim’s regime (along with Iran and Iraq) as part of an “axis of evil.” It was suspected that North Korea was enriching uranium at one of the nuclear facilities whose activities were supposedly frozen by the terms of the Agreed Framework. In January 2003 Kim announced that North Korea was pulling out of the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty and planning to develop nuclear weapons.

North Korea’s nuclear status remained an international issue. Kim’s regime was widely seen as using it as a negotiating point to secure economic aid and to deter the escalation of tensions with South Korea, which were ongoing. In October 2006 the country announced that it had conducted an underground test of such a weapon. Talks were suspended for several years, but another deal was struck in 2007; the verification of North Korea’s compliance, however, remained unsettled. The December 2007 election of Lee Myung-Bak as South Korean president began another deterioration in inter-Korean relations as Lee took a harder line with his North Korean counterpart. Over the next few years North Korea conducted occasional weapons tests, including a second underground nuclear test in May 2009. Relations between North and South reached a crisis point several times—notably in 2010, with the sinking of the South Korean warship Ch’ŏnan (Cheonan) near the maritime border in March and a November military skirmish on Yŏnpyŏng (Yeongpyeong) Island, in the same area, that killed two South Korean marines.

In 2008 speculation began that Kim’s health was deteriorating; after his absence from public view for several months, it was suspected that he had suffered a stroke. The following year Kim and the North Korean political establishment began a series of moves apparently toward designating Kim’s youngest son, Kim Jong-Un, as his successor.

Kim Jong-Un; Kim Jong Il Kim Jong-Un (left) and his father, Kim Jong Il (right), at a military parade in P'yŏngyang, North Korea, 2010. Kyodo/Landov

North Korean state media announced on December 19, 2011, that Kim had died on a train two days earlier.