Who will lead North Korea after Kim Jong-il’s death?

If the South Korean reports that Kim Jong-il has pancreatic cancer are correct, then the 'Dear Leader' of North Korea has only a one-in-five chance of surviving the next 12 months. So, thoughts must turn to who will take charge in Pyongyang after the funeral of the regime's figurehead.

The most likely successor is Kim Jong-un, the leader's youngest legitimate son, from his marriage to a Japanese-born dancer. Nothing that comes out of North Korea can ever be taken for certain, but reports indicate that party officials have begun teaching the peasant populace a song about Kim Jong-un's qualities. He has been given a new name, Yongmyong-han Dongji, which translates as 'Brilliant Comrade'.

Kim Jong-un's two older brothers fell from favour: Kim Jong-nam tried to enter Japan in 2001 on a dodgy Dominican passport "to go to Tokyo Disneyworld" and the other, Kim Jong-chul, is considered too "effeminate". Kim Jong-un (pictured above on a placard at a protest in South Korea) is thought to have the necessary ambition to lead his family's hermit regime.

Kim Jong-un was described as being friendly with the children of US diplomats

He also has the necessary education - he went to the Kim Il-sung Military University in Pyongyang. And he was described as the spitting image of his father by a Japanese chef who wrote an insider's expose of the time he spent cooking for Kim Jong-il.

Before he studied the art of war, Kim Jong-un, who could be either 25 or 26, reportedly attended the prestigious International School of Berne in Switzerland, where he was described as shy, a Michael Jordan fanatic, and friendly with the children of American diplomats.

So, despite his alleged taste for violent Jean Claude Van Damme movies, and his recent appointment as head of the secret police, there are hopes that the transfer of power from father to multilingual son could open up North Korea in the way that Deng Xiaoping, who as a teenager in the 1920s had studied and worked as a shoemaker in France, reformed China after Chairman Mao.

But these are still distant hopes, especially so in light of North Korea's recent attempts to display its military might with their ever more frequent nuclear and missile testing. Speaking, against protocol, in February, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said: "If there is a succession, even if it's a peaceful succession, that creates more uncertainty, and it may also encourage behaviours that are even more provocative, as a way to consolidate