ABSTRACT
After the death of North Korea’s founding leader Kim Il Sung in 1994, his son, Kim Jong Il, began to rule the state. He was little known to the outside world at the time. Experts on North Korea wondered whether Kim had the same power base and personal capacity to govern the state as his father had possessed. After the first leader’s death, the second leader had to deal with the most difficult period in North Korea’s history, the natural disasters and mass starvation of 1995-1998. Many people wondered how long Kim Jong Il could maintain the regime and whether a coup against the new totalitarian leader might soon result from his instatement.
