From the Telegraph ...Children's dance displays, synchronised swimming, fireworks and Kim's personal touch - flower shows featuring the Kimjongilia, a form of magnolia specially bred to bloom early in his honour - marked the 63 years of North Korea's "Dear Leader".
An army dance ensemble performed a concert featuring numbers such as General on a Galloping White Horse and a female solo, I Do Not Know a Warmer Bosom.
Pyongyang's central square "turned into rising waves of dances when the participants presented more enthusiastic dances, waving the flags of the supreme commander", said the official Korean Central News Agency.
"The Korean people unanimously revere leader Kim Jong-il as a brilliant commander," it added. The KCNA's clear assertion that Kim's personality cult is alive and well will come as a blow to those opponents who had hoped from recent leaks from inside the reclusive country that his power was heading for collapse...
Since losing its main backer, the Soviet Union, at the beginning of the 1990s, North Korea has suffered a famine in which at least a million people are thought to have died, industrial collapse, power shortages and now rampant inflation as tentative economic reforms are tried out...
"The day is an auspicious holiday for progressive people all over the world," said the KCNA.