THE youngest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has reportedly been named to the powerful National Defence Commission, an appointment analysts said yesterday indicates the 26-year-old is being groomed to take power amid tension over the country's nuclear programmes.
South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported that Kim Jong Un, thought to be his father's favourite son, was assigned to a low-level post at the defence commission.
North Korea has started to extract plutonium from spent fuel rods at its nuclear arms
plant, its foreign ministry said on Saturday, further raising regional tensions already stoked by its defiant rocket launch this month.
Experts said North Korea, believed to have enough fissile material for six to eight nuclear bombs, could yield enough further material for at least one more nuclear bomb.
The announcement came hours after the United Nations Security Council on Friday placed three North Korean companies on a UN blacklist for aiding Pyongyang's missile and nuclear programmes, eliciting a sharp rebuke from a North Korean envoy.
In Baghdad, Hillary Clinton, the US secretary of state, said America would not be "blackmailed" by North Korea. She said the US and others would ratchet up sanctions to try to prevent Pyongyang from proliferating its nuclear technology.
"We're going to crack down in conjunction with the Chinese, the Russians, the Japanese, the South Koreans and other allies to try to … tighten the band around North Korea so that they cannot do that," she said.
She made no mention of the two US journalists who are to go on trial in North Korea after they were detained while reporting about refugees on the country's border with China last month.
Laura Ling and Euna Lee, employed by the online broadcaster Current TV, are accused of straying into its sovereign territory with "hostile intent" and face at least five years of hard labour if they are convicted.
Analysts have voiced concerns that the women are being held as political hostages as North Korea faces off with the US over its alleged nuclear proliferation activities.
