Kim Jong-un, the "Great Successor", while a pupil in a Bernese school (Keystone)

by Thomas Stephens, swissinfo.ch

Following the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, a somewhat pessimistic security expert tells swissinfo.ch why all eyes are on the totalitarian dictatorship.

Albert Stahel, a professor of strategic studies at Zurich University’s Institute for Political Science, says a lot could depend on whether Kim’s Swiss-educated son, Kim Jong-un, believed to be in his late 20s, is accepted by the country’s generals.

Governments around the world are viewing Kim Jong-il’s death, after a 17-year rule, with wary optimism: a possibly destabilising moment for the region as power passes to his son, but also an opportunity for a new diplomatic start.

North Korea’s past behaviour has been notoriously erratic, making it difficult to predict the course it will choose. South Korea, anxious about the untested Kim Jong-un, put its military on high alert against the North’s 1.2 million-strong armed forces.

read more here

Note by the editor: As you can see from the photo the young Kim was ‘educated in Switzerland’ during his Secondary School years (not High School, not University). Just mentioning ‘educated in Switzerland’ in the News is therefore misleading.