The Australian reports: “North Korea is said to be creating a quasi-shrine to the son of leader Kim Jong-Il as it builds up a personality cult around the likely successor.

There have been widespread reports that youngest son Kim Jong-Un, 27, is being groomed to take over from his ailing 68-year-old father Jong-Il, who suffered a stroke in August 2008.

The secretive communist state is transforming the proclaimed birthplace of Jong-Un into a kind of shrine, Tokyo-based activist Lee Young-Hwa told the Chosun Ilbo newspaper.

The regime resumed work to lay railway tracks between the centre of the capital and its eastern Kangdong district, where the regime claims it discovered the ancient burial site of Tangun, the mythological founder of the first Korean kingdom.

Work began in March last year but stopped last summer, said Mr Lee, who heads the Rescue North Korean People Urgent Action Network.

A statue of Kim Jong-Il’s grandfather is also there.

‘The regime is making out that Jong-Un’s first home town is Kangdong and his second one Wonsan. But we don’t know if he was actually born in Kangdong,’ Mr Lee was quoted as saying.

Daily NK, a Seoul-based online newspaper run by defectors, reported in May that the North had moved residents out of Kangdong to transform Jong-Un’s birth house into a sacred site.

Kim Jong-Il took over from his father, founding president Kim Il-Sung who died in 1994, in the communist world’s only dynastic succession.

Both are the subject of intense personality cults fostered by the regime, which treats their birthplaces as sacred sites.

Some analysts say the North will probably designate Jong-Un as the leader’s political heir when it convenes a rare meeting of key communist party delegates in September…” (This is blasphemy – Exodus 20:3; Psalm 135:15 – 18.)

SpaceDaily.com reports: “A major South Korean naval exercise went into its third day, the defence ministry said, as North Korea issued a fresh warning against what it termed ‘a prelude to a war of aggression’.

The drill far south of the disputed maritime border in the Yellow Sea, was focused on defence against North Korea’s guided missiles and submarines, the ministry said.

The exercise is one of a series planned in coming months in a show of force against the North, which the South blames for a deadly torpedo attack on one of its warships in March.

A total of 4,500 troops, backed by 29 ships and 50 aircraft, are being mobilised for the five-day drill.

‘Some 20 Navy ships carried out anti-missile training in the Yellow Sea,’ a military official was quoted as saying by Yonhap news agency.

The drill included anti-aircraft and anti-submarine battles in the Yellow Sea as batteries stationed in an island near the sea border continued live-fire training…” (It’s possible that North Korea will align its military forces with China when this Eastern King invades Israel – Revelation 16:12.)

Voice of America News reports: “China has defended its business ties with Iran after a United States official urged Beijing to fully implement sanctions against Tehran…

China’s state media quoted a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman saying trade with Tehran is normal business and does not harm the interests of other countries or the international community.

She was responding to comments made by the United States’ special advisor for nonproliferation and arms control, Robert Einhorn.

Einhorn said China should fully cooperate with United Nations sanctions imposed against North Korea and Iran because of their nuclear programs.

The U.S. and European Union recently passed new sanctions against Iran and are encouraging Russia and China to support them. The sanctions target Iran’s energy and banking sectors.

Joseph Cheng, a professor of political science at Hong Kong’s City University, says Beijing has little interest in new sanctions…” (Russia and China will be the invaders during the 1^st and 2^nd moves against Israel – and Iran will be united with both nations in the battle of Armageddon – Ezekiel 38:1, 2, 5, 8, 16; Revelation 16:12; Revelation 9:14 – 18.)