Kim Jong Il

Biography

Kim John Il is the leader of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, a position he has held since 1994. Officially he is the chairman of the National Defense Commission of North Korea, supreme commander of the Korean People's Army, and general secretary of the Workers' Party of Korea (the ruling party since 1948). He succeeded his father Kim Il-sung, the founder of the Democratic People's Republic, who died in 1994.

In 2003 North Korea withdrew from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). On October 9, 2006, North Korea claimed that it had tested its first nuclear weapon at an undisclosed underground test site. Within days, both the United States and China reported collecting air samples from the region that contained small amounts of radioactive material as well as seismic data showing a possible subterranean explosion, consistent with North Korea's claim that it had conducted a nuclear test. It is widely believed that this was a smaller sized test (less than 1 kiloton nuclear yield).