North Korean Defense Commission Chairman Kim Jong Il is known to have indicated his intent of making his eldest son Kim Jong Nam, 31, his heir apparent as early as the late 1990s. "Kim Jong Il reportedly told his eldest son in 1999: 'If you succeeded me, you would have to grapple with the citizens' flight out of the county,'" claims Lee Young-guk, 41, a North Korean defector in the South who served as Kim Jong Il's bodyguard. Kim the junior has since taken charge of preventing citizens from fleeing the country and the deportation back of North Korean escapees arrested in China and elsewhere, frequenting China, adds the source. He claims to have learned about those facts from senior officials of the North's National Security Agency.

"I understand that Kim the junior is currently a deputy director of the National Security Agency, in the capacity of which he deals with the issue of North Koreans escaping from the nation," adds Lee who, as a member of the Division No. 6 Guards Department of the Workers' Party Central Committee, had guarded the North Korean leader at close range for a decade.

South Korean intelligence officials involved in North Korean affairs also say that Kim Jong Il, since the mid-1990s has been soliciting his Kim Il Sung University alumni to assist his eldest son cement his foundations as heir apparent, particularly in the intelligence and organization sectors. "It has been confirmed that Jong Nam started working at the National Security Agency, the topmost intelligence organization in the North, in 1996," comments an official. It was a three-star general, Kim Yong San, the North Korean leader's Kim Il Sung University classmate, that helped Jong Nam set foot in the security agency. While the national leader majored in economics, Kim Yong-san studied physics. Deeply involved in the information technology sector, Kim the junior concurrently holds the chair of the Korea Computer Center. He is also a deputy director of the ruling party's powerful Organization and Guidance Department.

"Only two people are granted free access to Kim Jong Il's villas; his sister Jong Hui, now director of the Central Committee's Light Industry Department, and his eldest son Jong Nam," claims Lee. "Jong Hui used to take Jong Nam along with her." This indicates that Kim the senior takes his sister Jong Hui and his son Jong Nam as of his innermost lineage, Lee asserts. He dismisses as groundless the observation in some quarters that Jong Nam, having been born from his father's mistress Song Hye-rim, is not eligible as heir apparent, and that the post would go to either Jong Chol, 21, or Jong Un, 19, both born from Ko Young-hui, the present spouse of the North's supreme leader.

(Lee Kyo-kwan, haedang@chosun.com )