N. Korea set for mass farewell to late leader

Hundreds of thousands of North Koreans were expected to gather Wednesday on Pyongyang's chilly streets to bid farewell to late leader Kim Jong-Il, as the regime bolsters his son's status as successor.

North Korean state television Wednesday morning broadcast scenes of mass grief at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where Kim's body lies in state in a glass coffin surrounded by red "Kimjongilia" flowers. It was not clear when the footage was filmed.

The North gave no indication when the funeral would begin and the secretive nation has not announced any schedule. Foreign delegations were not invited.

Since the elder Kim died of a heart attack on December 17 at age 69, the North's propaganda machine has been heaping tributes on both him and his son.

Official media has declared Jong-Un the "great successor", supreme military commander and Central Committee chief of the ruling Workers' Party, although he has not yet been formally appointed to the party and military posts.

The official news agency, in a report early Wednesday, referred to Jong-Un as "supreme leader of the Workers' Party of Korea and the Korean people".

Analysts expect Wednesday's funeral will be largely a re-run of the 1994 obsequies for Kim Jong-Il's father and founding president Kim Il-Sung -- a ceremony designed to pay homage to the late leader and build loyalty to his dynastic successor.

"The regime used the 1994 funeral to strengthen public allegiance and loyalty to new leader Kim Jong-Il," Yang Moo-Jin of Seoul's University of North Korean Studies said.

"His own funeral will be staged in a similar way."

The untested new leader Kim Jong-Un, only in his late 20s, has been the central figure in scenes of intense grief at the memorial palace.

It was unclear how prominently he would figure in the funeral itself. Kim Jong-Il was absent from the funeral motorcade for his late father 17 years ago.

South Korean media, basing their forecasts on the 1994 ceremonial, said the event would likely begin with Jong-Un and senior officials paying final respects at the memorial palace.

They said the military was expected to fire a 24-gun salute and troops would march through central Pyongyang, accompanying a limousine carrying Kim's coffin and another car with a giant photo.

Military marching bands would play funeral music while convoys of motorcycles and cars carrying flowers and senior officials would follow the coffin as hundreds of thousands looked on, the media forecast.

Mourning will officially end Thursday with a nationwide memorial service including a three-minute silence at noon. Trains, ships and other vehicles will sound their hooters.

Analysts will be focusing on the funeral line-up Wednesday for clues about the likely powers behind the throne, as the young Kim takes control of a nuclear-armed nation with the world's fourth-largest military.

Kim senior presided over a famine in the 1990s which killed hundreds of thousands and a collapsing economy. But he pressed on with missile tests and a nuclear weapons programme which earned his nation international sanctions.

There are still chronic shortages and UN agencies have said six million people -- a quarter of the population -- urgently need food.

The South's Yonhap news agency quoted the head of Seoul's National Intelligence Service, Won Sei-Hoon, as telling lawmakers that the North appears likely to continue the policies of its late leader.

The North has ordered its nationals working overseas to return home for the funeral and has imported truckloads of flowers from China, South Korean newspaper the Korea JoongAng Daily said.

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