The Modern History

Kim Jong-il: the life and times of North Korea’s Dear Leader in pictures - Telegraph

Officially, Kim Jong-il was born in 1941 on the slopes of Mount Paektu, on the border with China — the mythical birthplace of the Korean people and the place from which Kim il Sung is said to have waged his guerrilla struggle. Just before the birth of the junior Kim, according to the official account, a swallow descended from heaven to announce the coming of ‘a prodigious general, who will rule all the world’. A bright star shone over Jong-il’s nativity, although instead of a stable he was born in a log cabin. The humble abode stands to this day – as it should, since it was in fact built only in 1986. The reality is that Kim was born on February 16 1942 close to Khabarovsk, Siberia, where his father had taken refuge from the Japanese, then occupying Korea.