Korea's Kim Jong il has suspended a propaganda campaign to promote his youngest son as future leader after apparently winning the regime's support for the succession plan, analysts say.After securing acceptance of Jong-un's position as eventual heir, Kim may be concerned not to weaken his own authority in the interim, they say. Succession speculation began in earnest after Kim, now 67, suffered a stroke around August 2008.
For months afterward the hard-line Communist state made a series of bellicose moves, including missile launches and a nuclear test.
US and South Korean officials said they suspected the ailing leader was staging a show of strength as he tried to put a succession plan in place. In early August the regime began a series of peace overtures, starting with a pardon for two jailed US journalists after former president Bill Clinton visited Pyongyang.
Cheong Seong-chang of Seoul's Sejong Institute think tank said the conciliatory moves "reveal Kim's confidence that the son has firmly established his position."
Clinton spent three hours with Kim and found him "unexpectedly spry," the New York Times reported. "Kim, who is believed to have recovered his health to some extent, appears to be no longer concerned about a power struggle," Dongguk University professor Koh Yu-hwan told AFP. "That means, in other words, that the regime has regained stability. Now Jung-un's position (as heir) appears to be firmer than before."