Seoul (South Korea):
The North Korean state media released a photograph on Thursday of Kim Jong-un, the newly anointed heir to the dictator Kim Jong-il, the first verified image of him as an adult.
The newly released photo was published in the Thursday issue of North Korea's main newspaper, Rodong Shinmun, and showed him in a dark suit with his father and a large group of senior Workers' Party officials. He bore a strong resemblance to his father and, some thought, his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, the founder of North Korea.
Earlier this week, at a landmark meeting of the Workers' Party in the capital, Pyongyang, the younger Mr. Kim, who is believed to be 27 or 28, was given the rank of four-star general in the People's Army and was named a deputy chairman of the party's military commission. He also became a member of the Central Committee of the party, an ideological and policy-making post.
Chubby and looking somewhat older than his years, Kim Jong-un was seated two spots to his father's right, with another rising star, Vice Marshall Ri Yong-ho, seated between them. Mr. Ri, who was also placed on the country's Politburo and made vice chairman of its powerful ruling military commission, is said by South Korean news media to have guided Kim Jong-un in his crash military training over the last year and is now thought to be his closest associate.
The new appointments seemed not to have any immediate effect on North-South relations, which have been strained by the sinking in March of a South Korean warship, the Cheonan. While the two sides' militaries met for the first time in two years on Thursday, the talks ended with no apparent progress and no new meetings scheduled, according to an official with South Korea's Defense Ministry.
The talks began at 10 a.m. in the border village of Panmunjom and adjourned at 11:45 a.m., said the Defense Ministry official, who was not authorized to speak publicly on the matter. He declined to discuss the mood of the meeting.
He said South Korea demanded an apology for the Cheonan sinking, which Seoul has attributed to a North Korean torpedo attack. The sinking, which occurred along the two Koreas' disputed western sea border, killed 46 South Korean sailors.
The North has denied any involvement in the Cheonan sinking and on Thursday proposed that South Korea accept a team of investigators from the North. The South refused the request, the defense official said.
A statement by the United Nations Security Council in July expressed "deep concern" over the Cheonan's sinking, but did not find North Korea culpable. The North Korean ambassador told reporters at the time that the finding was "a great diplomatic victory."
Lee Sung-yoon, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, said North Korea "has closed the chapter on the Cheonan," citing the United Nations statement. "They're saying, 'Let's move on', " he said.
The renewal of working-level military talks was proposed this month by the North Koreans, apparently to focus on preventing naval clashes along their disputed western sea border. The North has also been angered by airborne leaflets sent across the border by South Korean activists. The leaflets, which criticize and ridicule the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, call on North Koreans to rise up against his regime.
Political analysts in Seoul were reluctant to connect the sudden resumption of military negotiations to what appeared to be the emergence of Mr. Kim's youngest son as his eventual successor.
The North's official Korean Central News Agency also released on Thursday a new list of the rosters of various party organizations along with the appointments made at the Workers' Party meeting this week in Pyongyang.