National Funerals For Kim Jong-il In NKorea

Kim Jong-il's Funerals

North Koreans on Wednesday bade farewell to former dictator Kim Jong-il, who passed away a week ago. Tens of thousands attended the funerals presided over by the dictator’s son Kim Jong-eun, the heir apparent, as the South Koreans organized rallies in their country demanding their North Korean brethren to seize the opportunity to release themselves from the oppression of the Communist regime.

The ceremony was displayed on national television a few hours after it happened. The ceremony began and ended at the palace built for Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea, where the body of Kim Jong-il had been displayed for the past week for all to see.

The casket with the body of the former dictator was carried during the procession on the palace grounds on a black limousine covered in chrysantema, the mourning flowers in NKorea.

Kim Jong-eun walked on the right-front side of the car with his uncle Jang Song-thaek and some generals surrounding him in a gesture showing that the new structure of power includes them all.

Analysts consider that the point of the entire ceremony, which lasted two hours, was to show the people that the new leadership is stable and that succession was going smoothly.

South Korean televisions broadcasted an hour of the procession, and then returned to their programs. People were shown along the streets where the procession went by. They were dominated by a somber attitude and were speaking fondly about the deceased leader.

The national television displayed its limitations as it did not have enough cameras to catch every aspect of the procession, which resembled the one in 1994 held for Kim Il-sung.

On Wednesday morning the state television paid an homage to the deceased Kim Jong-il, by showing images of him as a young man.

On Thursday, a massive memorial service will be held in honor of Kim, with tens of thousands in attendance, with the observance of three minutes of silence and with gun volleys and locomotives blowing whistles.

The China Daily warns that the transition will have to happen fast and that the new regime will have to make up for the unexpected demise, which offered the new leader little time to become acquainted with the mechanisms of power.

The program “Opening the gate to become a prosperous and powerful nation in 2012,” the Chinese newspaper says, must be a top priority in order to maintain the grip of power. Then again, after 20 years of economic stagnation it will be very difficult to get the economy going.

The Chinese express the conviction that the next five years will be referential for the revival of economy, and that in case the new regime fails to realize that, its political status could be severely weakened.

The regime’s stability, The China Daily urges, is a prerequisite for the development of the country, and also for the stability of the entire peninsula, since the NKorean regime has a nuclear program in progress.

The nations that guaranteed the six-country-format talks on denuclearization of Korean Peninsula understand now that applying pressure on the regime is only creating instability of the regime.