Kim Jong-Il’s body on display permanently

Kim’s body will be displayed at Pyongyang’s Kumsusan Memorial Palace, where his father and North Korea founder Kim Il-Sung’s embalmed body has been lying since his death in 1994.
Kim Jong-Il’s son and successor, Kim Jong-Un, has been solidifying power since his father died of a heart attack on 17 December.
The official Korean Central News Agency said on Thursday that North Korea will also erect a statue of Kim Jong-Il, set up portraits of a smiling Kim and build “towers to his immortality” across the country.
The North says Kim’s 16 February birthday will be a “Day of the Shining Star” in an apparent reference to past rocket launches.
The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) will erect a bronze statue of late leader Kim Jong Il, the latest in a series of measures to commemorate him, the official news agency KCNA reported yesterday.
The Political Bureau of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea issued a special report yesterday, saying the statue will be set up and the bier of the late leader will be put on display at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, the report said.
The measures “reflected the unanimous desire and ardent request” of all DPRK citizens to regard Kim Jong Il “as the eternal leader of the Party and the revolution, glorify his sacred revolutionary life and undying revolutionary feats and surely carry to completion the revolutionary cause of Juche,” said the report.
The bier of late President Kim Il Sung had also been placed in the Kumsusan Memorial Palace. His birthday, 15 April, is also a grand national holiday and had been designated as “the Day of the Sun.”
There are other statues in the Mansudae region in Pyongyang. Many portraits of Kim Il Sung and Towers of Immortality can also be seen outside the capital. – AP.