Kim Jong-un is expected to be appointed the next leader
of North Korea, succeeding his father, the "Dear Leader" Kim
Jong-il.
Born in 1983 or early 1984, the young man was initially not
thought to be in the frame to take up his father's mantle.
Analysts focused their attention on his half-brother Kim
Jong-nam and older full brother Kim Jong-chol.
But speculation that he was being groomed to succeed his father
picked up in January 2009, after a report from South Korea's Yonhap
news agency suggested that Kim Jong-il had picked him as heir.
North Korea watchers also took his reported appointment to the
powerful National Defence Commission as a possible signal that he
was being moved into a leadership position.
The defence commission is North Korea's most important
government body, and Kim Jong-il rules the country in his capacity
as the commission's chairman.
On 2 June 2009, South Korea's intelligence agency reportedly
briefed legislators that North Korean officials had been ordered to
support the choice of Kim Jong-un as the next leader.
There have already been poems and a song, Footsteps, composed,
to promote the young man's virtues as a leader.
Some 10 million portraits are being readied for distribution by
the authorities to hang alongside those of his father and
grandfather, according to reports.
At the same time, there has also been much speculation that the
man being lined up as the "power behind the throne" is Chang
Song-taek - the husband of Kim Jong-il's sister and director of the
administrative department of the North Korean Workers Party.
Some analysts see him acting as a "regent" to Kim Jong-un until
he is ready to rule on his own.
'Morning Star King'
Very little is known about the man himself. His mother was
thought to be Kim Jong-il's favourite wife, and she clearly doted
on her son, reportedly calling him the "Morning Star King".
In his 2003 book, I Was Kim Jong-il's Chef, a Japanese man
writing under the pseudonym Kenji Fujimoto also claimed that
Jong-un was his father's favourite.
But the death of Ko Yong-hui in 2004, reportedly from breast
cancer, appeared to put the younger Kim firmly behind his
half-brother in the leadership stakes.
However Kim Jong-nam's deportation from Japan in May 2001, and
middle brother Kim Jong-chol's apparent "unmanliness" subsequently
improved his chances.
Swiss-educated like his brothers, Kim Jong-un avoided Western
influences, returning home when not in school and dining out with
the North Korean ambassador.
Since his return to Pyongyang, he is known to have attended the
Kim Il-sung Military University.
But little has been made public about his character.
In August 2010 Kim Jong-il visited China. One South Korean TV
station cited a South Korean official as saying Kim Jong-un had
accompanied his father on the trip.
In his father's image
Said by Kim Jong-il's chef, Mr Fujimoto, to be the "spitting
image of his father in terms of face, body shape and personality",
the young Kim has never been photographed by the Western media.
The main photograph of him circulating in the public domain is
one taken when he was 11, which Mr Fujimoto said he was given by
Kim Jong-un before he left North Korea.
There is one other which is purported to have been taken at his
Swiss secondary school.
Kim Jong-un also shares some of his father's health problems,
and is reported already to have diabetes and heart disease due to a
lack of exercise.
He is reported to be a fan of NBA basketball.
But these details, as with many others in secretive North Korea,
are impossible to confirm.
