Mick Hartley

Gaddafi was 69 when he was killed. You know who else is 69?*

"Kim Jong-il and Gadhafi are very much alike in many respects," a South Korean government official said. Gadhafi's brutal killing "must have had a lot of psychological impact on Kim." 

Born in the same year, the two dictators maintained their stranglehold for about 40 years. Kim has held onto power for 37 years since he was designated his father's successor, compared to Gadhafi's 42 years since he toppled the Libyan monarchy in a military coup. 

"They're alike also in that they established idiosyncratic political systems that are unparalleled in modern history," said Han Ki-beom, a former deputy chief of the National Intelligence Service. 

Kim invented the "songun" (military first) policy, a doctrine he created by mixing regime founder Kim Il-sung's "juche" (self-reliance) ideology with his own reign of terror. Gadhafi propagated what he called direct democracy while calling his regime "Jamahiriya" (a nation of the people)….

The North tends to keep the death of other dictators very quiet. There was no mention of Gadhafi’s killing, and in December 2006 the official Minju Choson newspaper carried just a brief report 18 days after Iraqi strongman Saddam Hussein was executed. 

There is speculation that Kim Jong-il is likely to keep a low profile. When the Iraq War broke out in 2003, he disappeared from public view for about 50 days, and after Mubarak was ousted in February he vanished for 10 days. 

According to a South Korean government source, Kim deployed tanks around his residence and imported riot equipment from China right after Mubarak's ouster. "The regime will further tighten controls because of Gadhafi's death," another South Korean government official said. 

On the other hand the Dear Leader will doubtless take note of the fact that Gaddafi yielded to Western pressure to give up his nuclear weapons program, and a fat lot of good it did him in the end.

"Kim Jong-il is probably going to think he'll have to hold onto his nuclear arms to avoid Gadhafi's fate," said Ryu Dong-ryeol of the Police Science Institute.

[* According to the official North Korea record, that is, where Kim's birth at sacred Mt. Baekdu was supposedly foretold by a swallow, and heralded by the appearance of a double rainbow over the mountain and a new star in the heavens. In fact he was born in 1941, in Russia.]