hankyoreh

and the next is Jang Song-thaek. (KCNA AFP Yonhap)

People cry out as a procession of a hearse carrying the late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il‘s coffin passes through the streets of Pyongyang amid snowfall on Dec. 28. (Kyodo Yonhap)

By Son Won-je, Staff Writer

Flurries of snow were falling Wednesday in Pyongyang. At about 1:57 pm, a large limousine bearing the body of Kim Jong-il departed the snow-covered Kumsusan Memorial Palace square and traveled through the city's downtown, delivering farewells to the people. The Kim Jong-il era is officially over. This came seventeen years after Kim Il-sung's death in July 1994, and 37 years after Kim Jong-il's nomination as his father's successor in 1974.

A tearful Kim Jong-un saw his father off. The Workers' Party of Korea Central Military Commission vice chairman made an appearance personally "escorting" the hearse carrying his father's body at the funeral ceremony, which took place eleven days after Kim Jong-il's death. Kim was captured on camera with tears in his eyes while circling the square with the hearse. The dramatic farewell scene alerted the world of the proclamation of a new regime amid the grief, while playing up the son's tears to North Korean onlookers in an attempt to draw on his father's legacy.

An announcer on the country's state-run Korean Central Television provided tearful commentary from the scene, while weeping citizens crowded the square and roadsides captured by the camera. Now, the burden to build a “strong and prosperous nation” rests on Kim's 29-year-old shoulders. Without his father, this may prove to be a burden as crushing for him as the grief.

The arrival of this leader in his late twenties is casting a shadow of uncertainty on the whole of the Korean Peninsula. How things proceed for him could have a momentous impact not only on the fate of the regime in Pyongyang but the nuclear issue and inter-Korean relations as well.

The funeral ceremony was initially expected to take place at 10 am but was apparently delayed for about four hours because of the snow that fell in Pyongyang from the night before. A large-scale Central Memorial Meeting is scheduled to be held at noon Thursday in Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung Square, with attendees mourning Kim Jong-il and pledging their loyalty to the new leader.

In the longer term, the focus is on how he will direct the North Korean social system.

It saw Kim's body driven in a parade through the streets of Pyongyang before ending with his enshrinement once again at Kumsusan Memorial Palace.

The ceremony Wednesday for Kim Jong-il was similar to the one held for Kim Il-sung in 1994. The sequence of the funeral procession, with the funeral portrait, the laying of garlands by the successor, the hearse, and the funeral committee members, was the same as 17 years ago, as was the path around downtown Pyongyang by the hearse. The military band played the same arrangement of "The Partisan Requiem" as a funeral march at Kumsusan Memorial Palace, and the hearse was the same Lincoln Continental limousine.

A new wrinkle, however, was the sight of successor Kim Jong-un walking alongside the hearse with other high-level figures. The broadcasting of commentary from the scene was another new development.

KCTV provided a three-hour live relay of the ceremony starting at 1:57 pm Wednesday afternoon. The live feed was so unprecedented that some observers said it might not have been an active live broadcast, citing visible flubs such as the same images being repeated, as well as the country's history of airing so-called "live feeds" with a time delay in the past.

At the time of Kim Il-sung's death in 1994, the funeral ceremony started at 10 am, but the video was only made available at 3 pm.

Third son and successor Kim Jong-un was the only one of Kim Jong-il's three sons and five daughters confirmed to have attended the funeral ceremony Wednesday.

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