**North Korea has been holding birthday celebrations for its leader, Kim Jong-il, who with the military holds a firm grip on his country.**Synchronised swimming displays, a flower festival and gifts of sweets to children marked the national holiday.
Officials praised Mr Kim’s leadership but in contrast to tough talk last year called for dialogue with the West.
Mr Kim, like his father Kim Il-sung before him, has sustained a huge personality cult around his leadership.
Activists over the border in South Korea marked his 68th birthday by sending balloons carrying leaflets denouncing Mr Kim as a dictator.
‘Peerless commander’
On Monday, a meeting of senior communist party, army and state officials lauded Mr Kim “as the most outstanding political elder and peerlessly brilliant commander of the present era”.
However, the usual stark denunciations of the West were missing.
Instead, the secretive state’s number two leader, Kim Yong-Nam, stressed the need to end hostile relations with the United States “through dialogue and negotiations”.
China, the US, Russia, Japan and South Korea are keen for the North to rejoin six-party talks on how to end the North’s nuclear programmes.
There is also concern about the succession in North Korea following Mr Kim’s apparent stroke in August 2008.
Balloon release
In South Korea, about 100 defectors from the North and other activists shouted “Down with dictator Kim Jong-Il!” as they released huge balloons carrying 20,000 flyers just south of the heavily fortified frontier.
The balloons also carried about 30 small radios to persuade North Koreans to listen to anti-Pyongyang broadcasts from the South.
The bundles of flyers had $1 bills attached to them to encourage North Koreans to pick them up despite the risk of punishment.
“Our campaign is to tell our northern brothers that Kim Jong-il is not an idol but a dictator who deprived them of freedom,” said Park Sang-Hak, who heads a group of defectors from the North.
North Korea has often complained about such leaflet drops but the South says it has no laws against such acts.
Such is the personality cult surrounding the Kim dynasty that even Kim Jong-il’s birth year and birthplace remain obscure.
Official accounts say he was born on 16 February 1942, on Mount Paektu, a sacred site for Koreans, with a double rainbow and a bright star marking the event.
Most analysts believe he was in fact born in Siberia, where his father was in exile. Some put the birth year at 1941.