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SEOUL, South Korea - When Kim Jong-un made his debut as the North Korean heir apparent in September 2010, he looked so much like his grandfather, the closest thing North Koreans had to a god, that South Korean intelligence officials noted that many North Koreans who saw the young man for the first time on television broke down in tears.
"The regime wants its people to see Kim Jong-un as Great Leader Kim Il-sung reincarnated," said Kim Kwang-in, head of the North Korea Strategy Center, a research organization based in Seoul that collects information from sources inside North Korea.
"They fattened him up and gave him a thorough training - and plastic surgery, too, some even say - to make him look just like his grandfather."
Since his elevation to leader after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in December, Kim Jong-un, reportedly 28, has
been presenting himself as a near replica of his grandfather, Kim Il-sung - from the way he clapped his hands and walked with shoulders thrown back, down to such details as his double-breasted greatcoat, double chin and full cheeks.
The packaging of Mr. Kim as the embodiment of the North's widely revered founding president suggests that a careful
plan is at work to create a new leader.
The strategy of having Mr. Kim assume his grandfather's persona, and relying on nostalgia for the "Great Leader" to justify and consolidate his dynastic succession, reflects the slightness of the young leader's own résumé, as well as the influence of his grandfather and father.
It also suggests desperation among the nomenklatura, who know their privileged positions depend on the the Kim dynasty's survival.
More immediately, there is fevered speculation here about what kind of leader he will make - a figurehead, another Kim Jong-il or a North Korean Deng Xiaoping.
"When North Koreans see Kim Jongun, they think of Kim Il-sung when he was 33," said An Chan-il, a former North
Korean Army officer. Mr. An, 57, was referring to 1945, when Kim Il-sung, a guerrilla leader fighting for Korean independence, entered Pyongyang at the end of Japanese colonial rule, casting himself as the smiling liberator.
In reality, it was the Americans and the Soviets who liberated his father's "military first" policy but his grandfather's face.
Kim Jong-il's 17-year rule was marked by floods, drought, mass starvation and deepening international sanctions in response to his nuclear weapons program. Groveling generals kept a deferential distance from him. Few ordinary North Koreans ever heard him speak.
By contrast, Kim Jong-un is striking a confident posture that recalls his grandfather, who is often depicted in North Korean textbooks and murals as a leader surrounded by children and workers.
Grinning, sampling soup in a school kitchen, linking arms with workers, clambering onto a tank with soldiers and pulling weathered army generals closer to give them words of advice, Kim Jong-un looks at home in his new role as
the national eobeoi, or "parent," as his grandfather and ancient Korean kings were regarded by their subjects.
"It looks as if the DNA jumped from grandfather to grandson, skipping the father," said Lee Yun-keol, a North Korean
biologist who defected to the South in 2006 and now leads the North Korea Strategic Information Service Center, a
private research organization. "So we have a new leader who looks just like his grandpa. But that doesn't change much in the North."
