North Korea's reclusive leader with a passion for films - and ballistic missiles

Kim Jong Il, 60, rules the country as chairman of the Defence Commission of the ruling Workers' Party. He inherited the reign - and a personality cult - from his father, the late President Kim Il Sung, who died of heart failure in 1994 after half a century of iron-fisted rule. Theirs was the communist world's first hereditary transfer of power.

Kim Jong Il was born in 1942, close to Khabarovsk in the Russian Far East, where his father had taken refuge from the Japanese then occupying Korea. Seven years later, his mother died in childbirth.

Kim Jong II has a reputation for reclusiveness, and seems to have an aversion to meeting foreigners. He has rarely travelled overseas.

He is reportedly sensitive about his height, and on a rare occasion when he did meet a foreigner he is said to have introduced himself by saying: "I am not a very handsome man, am I? I am about the size of a dwarf."

His passion for film is legendary and he is reputed to have a library of at least 20,000 films and a staff of around 100 people dedicated to subtitling foreign movies into Korean.

It is believed that Friday the13th is his favourite film and that he also likes James Bond and Elizabeth Taylor.

And despite a reputation as a cigarette-smoking, brandy-drinking playboy, there are stories of him arranging parties and then watching the entire proceedings in private on video.