Outside North Korea, little was known about Kim Jong-il when he was thrust into the limelight on the death of his father.

With a reputation as a vain playboy, many analysts predicted the imminent collapse of the communist regime. But four years on, the short bespectacled younger Kim is still in charge -- although he remains very much a mystery.

He has rarely appeared or spoken in public, and he has not travelled outside North Korea since the 1980s.

New cult emerging

A rare public appearance

Within North Korea it's a different story. Kim Jong-il is regularly hailed by the media as the "peerless leader" and "the great successor to the revolutionary cause".

On the intellectual front, he's credited with having extended Kim Il-sung's personal philosophy of Juche, or self-reliance, which has been the guiding light for North Korea's development.

His other feats include writing six operas in two years, and personally designing the huge Juche tower in Pyongyang.

Life story

The cult surrounding Kim Jong-il extends even to his birth. He was born in Siberia in 1941 during Kim Il-sung's period of exile in the former Soviet Union.

But according to official North Korean accounts, he was born in a log cabin at his father's guerilla base on North Korea's highest mountain, Mt Paektu, in February 1942.

The event was reportedly marked by a double rainbow, and a bright star in the sky.

The younger Kim graduated from Kim Il-sung University in 1964, and after a period of grooming for leadership, he was officially designated successor to his father in 1980.

But he didn't hold any positions of real power until 1991, when he took control of the armed forces -- despite his lack of military experience.

Analysts believe he was given the position to counter potential resistance to his eventual succession. After the death of Kim Il-sung in 1994, it was three years before he took over the leadership of the ruling Korean Workers' Party.

What North Koreans can't read

South Korean accounts portray Kim as a vain and capricious playboy, with permed hair and lifts in his shoes, and a penchant for foreign liquor.

They have also consistently reported rumours of young women being kidnapped in Japan and elsewhere to be his companions in a string of luxury villas.

Kim has been careful to keep the army on his side

There's a more sinister side too -- for years Kim Jong-il has been suspected abroad of being the man behind the 1983 bomb attack in Rangoon that killed several members of the South Korean Cabinet , as well as the bombing of a South Korean airliner in 1987.

Some analysts believe the younger Kim was responsible for developing North Korea's suspected nuclear weapons programme.