Interested in where the "Dear Leader" has been? On the following pages, there are tracking sheets to follow the public appearances of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il. All material is modified from [North] Korean Central News Agency unless otherwise noted.

So why, you may ask, do I spend my time tracking the "Dear Leader" in his travels through North Korea and beyond the borders of the "Hermit Kingdom?"

Well, in part because the mystery that always surrounded Kim intrigued me, and I can't pass up a challenge to unravel a puzzle like North Korea's leader (Note I didn't say "president," as his dead dad, Kim Il Sung, is president in perpetuity).

Another reason to track Kim is to see what the priorities are in North Korea -- If Kim spends most of his time looking at catfish farms, then there is a good chance that there are some serious discussions on food going on in Pyongyang.

Finally, in the post Cold War days, there aren't that many international "bad guys" to study and, in some respects, admire. Now don't get me wrong, Kim may well have played a key hand in several terrorist acts, including blowing up half the South Korean cabinet while they were in Myanmar and knocking a South Korean airliner out of the sky, but you have to admit that he has been an amazing manipulator of international opinion and a prime example of a survivor.

And thus, rather than simply dismissing him as another whacked out Third World dictator or accept the old stories (highly colored by the South Korean intelligence services) that he is a reckless playboy who fell off a horse and landed on his head a little too hard as a kid, Kim should be studied to see what really drives his decisions and the actions of the North Korean regime. After all, didn't U.S. President George W. Bush consider North Korea important enough to include on the three-member Axis of Evil? Who else has 100 medium-range ballistic missiles capable of dropping WMD into Tokyo, Okinawa and Seoul within 15 minutes notice?

I have a large collection of Kim Jong Il pictures culled from the web and news media, but I am not putting them all here due to copy-write issues. What WILL be on this site is a tracking sheet to see where Kim Jong Il has visited (at least as it is reported in the North Korean state media). Currently I have formatted 2001 through 2003, and am in the process of formatting the information back to 1997, when Kim officially took over running North Korea, three years after the death of Kim Il Sung. I will also add later some biographical material on Kim, as well as some of the more wild rumors about his lifestyle that were once ubiquitous, but quickly went the way of the dodo after the 2000 inter-Korean summit.

Enjoy!
YiSunShin

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