SEOUL - Vilified, ridiculed and feeling threatened by the outside world, at home North Korea's reclusive leader Kim Jong-il basks in praise as a man of god-like wisdom and talents.
This week he hosts only the second summit between the rival Korean states, which comes hard on the heels of international efforts to persuade him to give up his nuclear arsenal.
Dubbed "Dear Leader" by the domestic media he controls, Kim, 65, inherited one of the world's most secretive states in 1994 on the death of his father, founding president Kim Il-sung, creating the first communist dynasty.
Officially, he was born at a secret anti-Japanese guerrilla camp near Paektu-san, a mountain on the border with China now revered as a place of pilgrimage. Analysts say it is more likely his birthplace was in the Soviet Union where his father was being trained with other Korean exiles.
Since taking the helm he has, by most accounts, successfully built an unchallenged position of power despite presiding over the communist state's deepening decline into poverty, mass starvation in the 1990s and heavy dependency on foreign aid in a country where the state doctrine is self-reliance.
Kim's many titles put him atop North Korea's main power centres, notably the military, but he is not state president.
In the cult of personality that dominates North Korea, that role was posthumously handed to his father for eternity.
North Korea's propaganda machine paints the head of the world's only communist dynasty as a man of rare ability.
Kim junior has piloted jet fighters, penned operas, has a photographic memory, and even struck 11 holes-in-one in the first round of golf he ever played.
