Silent succession taking place in North Korea?

Adding fuel to speculation that North Korea's ailing leader Kim Jong-Il may step down, media reports claimed his youngest son has been secretly appointed to Parliament in preparation for an eventual succession.

Though the name of Kim Jong-Un was absent from a list of 687 Supreme People's Assembly deputies elected in 2009, the 27-year-old was appointed to Parliament under the pseudonym of "Kim Jong", Dong-A Ilbo newspaper quoted a Western source informed in North Korean affairs as saying.

Jong-Un ran for constituency number 216 to mark the February 16 birthday of Kim Jong-Il, the newspaper said. Even Chosun Ilbo newspaper said Jong-Un's name was not on the published list of deputies because the North wanted to cover up his appointment.

The source said the communist state began building up a personality cult around Jong-Un after the appointment by teaching a song entitled "Footsteps" at primary schools.

However, South Korea's unification ministry and National Intelligence Service said they could not immediately confirm the reports.

Yang Moo-Jin of Seoul's University of North Korean Studies said there was a "50-50" chance that Jung-Un had been secretly installed in Parliament.

If the media reports were correct, "Pyongyang may have wanted Jong-Un's election to be kept secret because of the political sensitivity of the power succession", Yang was quoted by The Daily Telegraph as saying.

There have been widespread reports that Jong-Un is being groomed as eventual successor to his 68-year-old father, who suffered a stroke in August 2008.

Kim Jong-Il took over from his father, founding president Kim Il-Sung who died in 1994, in the communist world's only dynastic succession.