FACTBOX: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il
(Reuters) - North Korea's apparently successful launch of a long-range rocket on Sunday could be a boost to the reclusive country's leader, Kim Jong-il.
Kim, 67, is believed to have suffered a stroke last August, although he appears to have largely recovered.
Analysts say a successful launch would help Kim shore up support after speculation about his health raised questions about his grip on power. South Korean President Lee Myung-bak said last week that Kim was apparently in better health and had a continued hold on power.
Following are key facts about Kim, many of which have been embellished by official North Korean 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 of the peninsula.
ANOINTED SUCCESSOR
Kim Il-sung named his son as his successor in 1974. Kim Jong-il, now 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 a Korean Air jetliner in 1987 that killed 115.
Kim is also suspected of devising plans to raise cash by kidnapping Japanese, dealing drugs through North Korean embassies and counterfeiting currency.
POWER SHIFT
Took power in 1994 when his father died at the age of 82. Kim Jong-il assumed title of grand secretary of the Workers' Party and chairman of the National Defense Commission, but did not take title as president. "Great Leader" Kim Il-sung was named eternal president.
CULT OF PERSONALITY
According to North Korean officials and state media, Kim boasts a photographic memory, 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.
(Reporting by Jon Herskovitz, editing by Jonathan Thatcher and John Chalmers)
