Putting aside his caricature image as an eccentric playboy, Kim Jong-Il was a politically-skilled and ruthless ruler who kept North Korea’s brutal regime in place despite famine and economic decline.

Mr Kim, who died on Saturday of a heart attack aged 69, perpetuated his power using propaganda, prison camps, a personality cult inherited from his father and a massive army.

He defied widespread predictions of regime collapse as the communist state’s economy wilted under its own contradictions and Soviet aid dried up in the early 1990s.

In the mid-to-late 1990s Kim presided over a famine that killed an estimated one million people – but he still found resources to continue a nuclear weapons programme culminating in tests in October 2006 and May 2009.

Severe food shortages continue. The UN children’s fund estimates one-third of the children in his country are stunted by malnutrition. The regime faces increasing pressure from sanctions over its nuclear and missile programmes and the parlous state of the economy. But the late leader’s state of health accelerated a perilous succession.

They cited a deadly torpedo attack in March 2010 on a South Korean warship. The sinking, which Seoul and Washington blamed on Pyongyang, triggered tougher US sanctions as well as reprisals from Seoul.

Then in November 2010, the North bombarded the flashpoint border island of Yeonpyeong, killing two South Korean Marines and two civilians.

It was the first attack on a civilian area since the 1950-53 Korean war.

Both the US and South Korea have warned of rising dangers from an unpredictable Pyongyang.