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SEOUL : North Korea marked its founding anniversary Thursday with fulsome praise of leader Kim Jong-Il, but gave no news on whether it has begun a rare meeting believed aimed at promoting an eventual successor.
Kim inherited absolute power in the hardline communist state after his father and founding president Kim Il-Sung died in 1994.
Widespread reports say the ailing 68-year-old intends another dynastic succession involving his youngest son Jong-Un.
Delegates from the ruling party are scheduled to meet in the first half of this month, in the biggest political gathering for 30 years, and are widely expected to anoint Jong-Un.
South Korean officials have said the North has apparently finished preparing for the mass meeting in Pyongyang, but there is still no indication when it will get under way.
In the meantime, officials heaped praise on the Kim dynasty.
Premier Choe Yong-Rim, at a national meeting Wednesday, hailed the country's founding in 1948 as "a brilliant victory" for Kim Il-Sung's philosophy.
"Today the (North) has greeted the golden age of its development, demonstrating the invincible might under Kim Jong-Il's energetic leadership of patriotic devotion," the official Korean Central News Agency quoted Choe as saying.
Floral baskets and wreaths were placed at monuments in the capital to celebrate the nation's founding on September 9, 1948, the agency said.
Many party members, government officials and soldiers paid tribute at the Kumsusan Memorial Place which houses the embalmed remains of Kim Il-Sung.
In South Korea, about 100 refugees from the North and other activists gathered near the border to release 10 giant balloons carrying some 100,000 propaganda leaflets towards North Korea.
The balloons carried slogans such as "Kim Jong-Il, the enemy of the people" and "We oppose third-generation power succession".
Analysts expect the North's party delegates formally to endorse Jong-Un as eventual heir to his father, who suffered a stroke in August 2008.
But they say the son may not move into the limelight yet by taking a high-profile party post.
Kim attended a concert by an army unit orchestra, his first known public appearance since he returned late last month from a trip to China, KCNA said Wednesday, without giving a date for the performance.
The South's Chosun Ilbo newspaper said Thursday that Kim was resting at one of his villas.
"I think the regime will open the party conference only when it's sure that Kim has had a good rest," an unidentified security official in Seoul was quoted as saying.
The conference is likely to be a gruelling chore for Kim, who will be expected to sit bolt upright before thousands of deputies and TV cameras for at least five hours a day, the daily said.
- AFP /ls
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