Factbox: A look at North Korean leader Kim Jong-il

Portraits of North Korea's founder and former leader Kim Il-sung (L) and his son and current leader Kim Jong-il are hung at an observation post just south of the demilitarized zone separating the two Koreas in Paju, north of Seoul September 28, 2010.

(Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong-il is the general secretary of the ruling Workers' Party which will start a conference Tuesday, bringing together the secretive state's political elite for the first time in 30 years.

Early Tuesday, the state news agency KCNA announced that Kim had named his youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as a military general. This suggested that a dynastic succession process was under way.

Following are some facts about Kim, many of which have been embellished by official media to build a cult of personality:

BIRTH

February 16, 1942. Western reports suggest Kim was born at an army camp in the Soviet Union where his father was a key figure among Korean communist exiles receiving training. The North says Kim was born in a secret guerrilla camp at Mount Paektu, a peak considered sacred to Koreans.

Kim Jong-il's younger brother mysteriously drowned in 1947.

EARLY YEARS

Kim was mostly educated in China and later attended Kim Il-sung University, named after his father, in Pyongyang. He joined the ruling Korean Workers' Party upon graduation and quickly rose in its ranks. By 1969, he was a member of its Politburo and deputy director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department.

North Korea's official biography said that in elementary school, Kim showed his revolutionary spirit by leading marches to battlefields where Korean rebels fought against Japanese occupiers.

ANOINTED SUCCESSOR

Kim Il-sung named his son as his successor in 1974. Kim Jong-il, referred to as the "Dear Leader" in state media, steadily increased his power in domestic, international and security affairs in the 1980s.

Intelligence experts say Kim ordered the 1983 bombing in the capital of Burma, now Myanmar, that killed 17 senior South Korean officials and the bombing of an airliner belonging to South Korea's Korean Air in 1987 that killed 115.

Kim has also been suspected of devising plans to raise cash by kidnapping Japanese, dealing drugs through North Korean embassies and counterfeiting currency.

POWER SHIFT

He took power in 1994 when his father died at the age of 82. Kim Jong-il assumed the title of grand secretary of the Workers' Party and chairman of the National Defense Commission, but did not take the title of president. "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung is named eternal president.

CULT OF PERSONALITY

According to North Korean officials and state media, Kim has a photographic memory, and has piloted jet fighters, composed operas, directed globally acclaimed movies -- and hit 11 holes-in-one in the first round of golf he ever played.

PEACE AND POWER

Kim met South Korean President Kim Dae-jung at the airport when he arrived in June 2000 in Pyongyang for what was the first meeting of the leaders of the two Koreas. A landmark summit with then U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Russian President Vladimir Putin soon followed.

In February 2005, North Korea said it had nuclear weapons and in October 2006 it rattled the region by exploding a nuclear device. It conducted a second nuclear test in May 2009.

Tensions have risen to their highest levels in years this year with the torpedoing of a South Korean warship that killed 46 sailors. The South blamed the attack on Pyongyang, but the North denied responsibility.

LATER YEARS

Kim is thought to have suffered a stroke in August 2008 that kept him out of the public eye for months. In two trips to China in 2010, he has looked frail.

Kim has three known sons -- Jong-un is the youngest, and reported to be his favorite.

(Reporting by Seoul Bureau; Editing by Jeremy Laurence)