Although Kim Jong Il has ruled North Korea for nearly a decade, little is known about the reclusive leader, son of North Korea's "Eternal Leader" and first ruler, Kim Il Sung.

Outside North Korea, Kim is portrayed as erratic, impetuous and unpredictable, with an appetite for fast cars, expensive liquor and beautiful women.

When Kim does appear in public, he strikes an odd figure, almost always wearing sunglasses and sporting a bouffant hairstyle and platform shoes to add height to his 5'3" frame.

Throughout his life, Kim Jong Il has crafted his public image to maintain a tight grip on North Korea and, some experts say, to manipulate the world opinion. Details on his personal life are intentionally vague, and the DPRK government issues official propaganda to feed Kim's cult of personality.

For example, North Korean children are taught that Kim Jong Il's life began amid a spectacular lightning storm on Feb. 16, 1942 in a secret anti-imperialist guerrilla camp near the Chinese-Manchuria border atop of Mount Paektu, the highest mountain peak in the peninsula considered the ancient birthplace of modern Korea.

By all other accounts, the leader was born in 1941 in Khabarovsk, a Siberian town near the Korean border, where his father, Kim Il Sung, then a revolutionary fighter, was hiding from the Japanese who then controlled Korea.

While Kim led a privileged childhood as the son of North Korea's "Eternal Leader," it was also a lonely one. Kim Il Sung groomed him to become his successor, but he also "treated him like a dog," according to James Lilley, former ambassador to South Korea.

Kim Il Sung was a tough guerrilla fighter and a leader in the resistance against the Japanese during World War II. On the other hand, his son enjoyed an elite lifestyle, preferring musicals and the movies to the military, according to reports from defectors.

To compensate for their differences, Kim Jong Il "studied issues of interest to his father, in attempts to attract attention from his father," says Hwang Jang-yop, the highest-ranking official to defect from North Korea.

Kim used his interests in make-believe to promote his father's image and his political ideology, even producing revolutionary operettas, like "Sea of Blood" and "A Flower Girl."

As a young child, Kim suffered the deaths of his three-year old brother in 1948 in a drowning accident in Pyongyang, and that of his mother, Kim Jong Suk, who died during childbirth in September 1949.

Kim also appears devoted to his younger sister, Kim Kyung Hee, now head of the light industry division of the Worker's Party Economic Policy Audit Department. Kim Jong Il once remarked that "everyone should be as loyal as Kim Kyung Hee" and demands that his sister be treated with the same respect and deference, according to Hwang Jang-yop.

Rise to power
Between 1971 and 1980, Kim Jong Il rose through the ranks of the Korean Worker's Party hierarchy. As deputy minister of culture and art, Kim scored points with his father by propagating his father's cult of personality and the official "juche," or self-reliance, political ideology.

In 1974, Kim Il Sung formally designated his son as his heir, establishing the first-ever dynastic succession in a communist nation.

Indulging his interest in becoming a movie director, the younger Kim ordered the abductions of a South Korean movie director, Shin Sang-ok, and his actress wife in 1978. He reportedly made six movies with his hostages until the two escaped several years later, according to their tell-all account of the ordeal. Kim Jong Il denies he had them kidnapped, saying Shin and his wife, Choi En-hui, worked for him willingly.

During the 1970s and 1980s, Kim authorized the abductions of at least 13 Japanese citizens for the purposes of spying and terrorist training. Kim apologized for this in 2002.

Western and Russian intelligence sources also suspect Kim of authorizing several other terrorist acts, including the 1983 bombing in Rangoon, Burma, that killed 17 members of a South Korean delegation, including several cabinet members, and the Nov. 29, 1987 bombing of a South Korean jet that killed 115 people. Intelligence sources say Kim may have ordered the bombing in order to frighten people away from the 1988 Olympics in Seoul.

What ever his links to terrorist acts, Kim effectively used intimidation and violence as he made his way to top positions of the party, purging -- either through jailing, executing or sending to concentration camps -- his opponents from the military and governmental ranks, according to North Korean scholars and defectors.

"He has been known to dispense with his sycophants in summary fashion at the slightest hint of disloyalty," Hwang Jang-yop, a former adviser to Kim Il Sung, says, referring to Kim Jong Il's propensity to imprison or execute anyone who disagreed with him.

"He's ruthless and will do anything he needs to in order to cling to power," Hwang says, adding that Kim monitors and regularly wiretaps those close to him.

'Dear Leader'
Kim's fate as future leader was sealed in December 1991 when his father appointed him supreme commander of the Korean People's Army. The younger Kim's subordinates began referring to him as "Dear Leader," in reference to his father's title, "Great Leader."

When his father died in 1994, Kim Jong Il became head of the armed forces, but refrained from assuming his father's title of state president and general secretary of the Korean Worker's Party for another three years.

Kim's hesitancy fueled speculation that the Korean military would try to oust him, since he was widely seen as incapable of holding together the impoverished communist state.

Finally, in October 1997, the official North Korean press reported the North Korean parliament appointed Kim Jong Il as secretary-general of the North Korean Worker's Party, and that he would now be called "Great Leader," the title his father held.

The next year, Kim Jong Il announced his father would hold the presidency for "eternity," bestowing on Kim Il Sung the title "Eternal Leader."

Kim Jong Il is well aware of his complex reputation. During historic reunification meetings with South Korean President Kim Dae Jung in June 2000 he told the press that he is not the recluse the world thinks he is.

"Some Europeans say that I'm reclusive, that this the first time I've appeared in public. In fact, I've been to China and Indonesia. I've made many secret visits abroad. How can people claim I'm reclusive?" Kim Jong Il joked to reporters.

Former U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit the communist nation and to meet personally with Kim, dispelled rumors about the North Korean ruler's competency, saying bluntly, "He's not a nut."

"He did seem informed. He also told me he had three computers in his office. He watches a different television network, and stays informed. He says that he [watches] CNN," Albright told the NewsHour on Oct. 30, 2000.

Certain images (Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, 1995; Kim Jong Il at Memorial Service for Kim Il Sung, 1999; Kim Jong Il and Jiang Zemin, 2001) courtesy of The People's Korea

-- Compiled by Liz Harper for the Online NewsHour