New York -LRB- CNN -RRB- -- Kim Jong Il was the enigmatic leader of the most enigmatic country on earth . Much about Kim 's life was , and is , shrouded in mystery . Even the year of his birth -- 1942 -- has been contested by knowledgeable sources in South Korea and Russia , who claim Kim was born a few years earlier but that his official birth date was pushed back to make him exactly 30 years younger than his father , North Korea 's founding leader , Kim Il Sung . North Koreans claim Kim Jong Il was born on Mount Paektu , along the North Korean border with China , at a `` secret base camp '' where his father was leading a guerrilla war against Korea 's Japanese overlords . Almost everyone else believes Kim was born in Russia , at a Soviet military camp near Khabarovsk where his father had gone into retreat with other Korean and Chinese communist guerillas . But the myth of Kim 's guerilla-base birth became full-blown propaganda when he was anointed heir apparent in the early 1980s . After seeing instability and communist backsliding in Russia and China following the deaths of Stalin and Mao respectively , Kim Il Sung chose his son as successor to ensure continuity for North Korea 's political system . In some ways , the elder Kim was all too successful . Kim Jong Il led North Korea not to reform and opening , like his Chinese contemporaries , but through economic catastrophe , famine and repeated nuclear confrontations with the United States . Through all of this , the rule of the Korean Workers ' Party , the Korean People 's Army and the Kim family has been absolute and ubiquitous . When Kim Jong Il took over the reigns of power following his father 's death in 1994 , he had been preparing for succession for more than two decades . After graduating from Kim Il Sung University in 1964 , Kim rose through the ranks of the Korean Workers ' Party , focusing on culture and propaganda . As he candidly admitted to a conference of party workers in 1996 , economics was never his strong suit . He enjoyed film and the arts , fine food and drink , and kept late hours , but he was not the unstable and intellectually vacuous playboy of South Korean propaganda . He certainly lacked the charisma and outgoing personality of his father , but foreign officials who met him -- including South Korean President Kim Dae-jung , Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi and U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright -- described him as intelligent , well-informed , even charming . On the other hand , his country 's reputation for unpredictability and provocation was often well-deserved , as North Korea went through a series of confrontations with the United States and the international community over nuclear development , and the economic situation lurched from crisis to crisis . North Korea held two nuclear tests , in 2006 and 2009 , in defiance of international condemnation and U.N. sanctions . A year ago North Korean artillery shelled a South Korean island in a confrontation over South Korean military exercises , bringing the two sides to the brink of open warfare . At the same time , the economic situation -- though much improved since the famine years of the late 1990s -- remains highly precarious . If the outside world saw Kim as an enigma and a rogue , his reputation within North Korea is more difficult to assess . Of course , internal North Korean propaganda built up Kim as a hero of near-superhuman abilities , venerated by all his countrymen . But defectors ' reports suggest the view of Kim within his own country is more mixed , and while his father is still widely revered , Kim Jong Il is associated with the trauma of famine and crisis in the late 1990s . Kim oversaw limited steps toward economic reform in the early 2000s , but these have since been scaled back . The composition and direction of the post-Kim Jong Il leadership is murky . Kim Jong Il 's son and heir apparent , Kim Jong Un , is even more a mystery than his father was when he came to power . It seems likely that in the immediate aftermath of Kim 's death , North Korea will be run by a collective leadership , perhaps headed by Kim 's brother-in-law Jang Song-taek , as Kim Jong Un is prepared to assume official power . No one outside Pyongyang 's inner circle knows what kind of leader Kim Jong Un will be and where he will take the country . If North Korea survives the post-Kim Jong Il transition and its circumstances improve , Kim Jong Il may be remembered as a leader who guided North Korea through a disastrous period and prepared the way for reform . If things go badly , Kim will be seen as the man who oversaw the unraveling of the system his father built and as the face of a failed dynastic communism . The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Charles Armstrong .