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North Korean Communist Dictator is Dead

AP

Kim Jong Il

Kim Jong Il, North Korea’s mercurial and enigmatic leader, has died. He was 69.

Kim’s death was announced Monday by state television from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang.

Kim is believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but appeared relatively vigorous in photos and video from recent trips to China and Russia and in numerous trips around the country carefully documented by state media.

The leader, reputed to have had a taste for cigars, cognac and gourmet cuisine, was believed to have had diabetes and heart disease.

The news came as North Korea prepared for a hereditary succession. Kim Jong Il inherited power after his father, revered North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, died in 1994.

In September 2010, Kim Jong Il unveiled his third son, the twenty-something Kim Jong Un, as his successor, putting him in high-ranking posts.

Asian stock markets moved lower amid the news, which raises the possibility of increased instability on the divided Korean peninsula.

South Korea’s Kospi index was down 3.9 percent at 1,767.89 and Japan’s Nikkei 225 index fell 0.8 percent to 8,331.00. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng slipped 2 percent to 17,929.66 and the Shanghai Composite Index dropped 2 percent to 2,178.75.

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16 Comments

  • the world is now a better place

    I’m supposed to be upset? We should dance on the bastard’s grave.

  • declasse- intellectual

    Threee deaths in a short period, Kim, Hitchens and Havel. The end of the Gemora Sanhedrin said it best.

  • WOW!!!!

    I was really worried – but now, BORUCH HASHEM, I know that yudel still has a chance.

  • Darth_Zeidah

    declasse- intellectual wrote:
    “Threee deaths in a short period, Kim, Hitchens and Havel. The end of the Gemora Sanhedrin said it best.”

    I can understand your antipathy to Kim. Would you like to explain your derogatory remarks about Hitchens and Havel, please?

  • Kimmy Hitchens

    Hitchens reprinted and publicized a lie about Jews not being able to save the lives of non-Jews on Shabbos. When Boteach caught him on it, Hitchens did nothing meaningful to retract this blood libel, which apparently appears in his book.

    Havel does NOT belong on the same list. Havel was a very great man.

    On the other hand, Kim is probably listening to Hitchens’ speeches right now.

  • To # 10

    His antipathy towards religion in general and Judaism in particular bordered on the pathological. How else does one explain his comparison of Jewish ritual circumcision to the abhorrent practice of female genital mutilation that is practiced in Africa and parts of the Arab and Moslem world? How else does one explain his implicit accusation that there is a component of sexual molestation in the circumcision ceremony? How else does one explain his glib declaration that “Orthodox Jews conduct congress by means of a hole in the sheet? A minute of Internet research would have revealed that this is an utter lie; a minute of research he obviously never bothered doing.

  • Milhouse

    #11 “Hitchens reprinted and publicized a lie about Jews not being able to save the lives of non-Jews on Shabbos. ”

    Since when is it a lie? It’s an explict halacha in the gemara and every single rishon and acharon, right through to the Alter Rebbe’s Shulchon Oruch. Only in the 19th century did rabbonim start permitting it, in order to prevent pogroms.