SEOUL, April 15 (Yonhap) -- North Korea celebrated the birthday of its deceased founder Thursday, setting off lavish fireworks the night before in a rally to pledge "eternal" loyalty, official media reported, while South Korean activists flew leaflets across the border to call for an uprising against the communist dynasty.
The birthday of Kim Il-sung -- dubbed "the Day of Sun" -- is one of the most important holidays in the isolated North which the son, Jong-il, has ruled with an iron fist since his father died in 1994.
A massive personality cult surrounds the two men, while outside officials say another hereditary power transfer appears to be quietly underway in the reclusive country.
The Korean Central News Agency (KCNA), monitored in Seoul, said top North Korean officials and a number of citizens gathered in Pyongyang Wednesday to watch fireworks on the eve of the 98th anniversary of their late founder's birthday.
"Kaleidoscopic fireworks and a variety of rays turned the nocturnal sky as bright as day," the KCNA said in a report released Thursday. Slogans such as "General Kim Il-sung is our sun" and "We will live forever with the President" were seen on electronic displays set up in the middle of a river, it noted.
Kim Jong-il watched a concert praising the exploits of his father, the KCNA reported in a separate report later Thursday, while officials flocked to sites where the ruling family had once resided.
"Floral baskets were also laid before the statues of the President at different units in the city," it said, referring to Kim Il-sung.
North Korea has designated 2012, the centenary of Kim's birth, as the target year for the nation to become a "kangsong taeguk," or great, prosperous, and powerful nation, a cause that tops all its state agenda.
Under U.N. sanctions for its two nuclear tests, the country, however, has been struggling to feed its people. Decades-long economic isolation and mismanagement has crippled the country's rationing system while its industries suffer from a lack of resources, with the 1.2-million-strong army absorbing most of them.
The birthday still marked the start of an extended holiday period that the Unification Ministry in South Korea said also affected operations at a joint industrial park just north of the border.
Most of the 42,000 North Korean workers at the Kaesong industrial complex stayed home Thursday as they went on a two-day leave to observe the anniversary, ministry spokesman Chun Hae-sung said.
In a South Korean town just south of the heavily armed border, about 150 activists floated balloons containing leaflets denouncing the Kim dynasty, a thousand U.S. dollar notes and DVDs showing life in the more affluent
The move came after North Korea threatened last week to take unspecified "decisive measures" if the South does not stop the activists from flying the leaflets across the border.
"Kim's family has starved its people to death and stabbed the southern people in the back by provoking war,"
Park Sang-hak, head of the group, said by phone, snubbing the renewed threat from Pyongyang. "North Koreans need to wake up and rise."
South and North Korea remain technically at war after the 1950-53 Korean War ended in a truce rather than a peace treaty.
The activists say the leaflets let ordinary North Koreans know about their leader Kim Jong-il's luxurious lifestyle and womanizing and his health that noticeably worsened in recent years.
On Wednesday, North Korean media said authorities and citizens held exhibitions, performances, competitions and rallies across the country as part of the commemoration of the late leader's birthday.
It also released an order by Kim Jong-il to carry out the biggest promotion of generals since he took power, raising the ranks of 100 officers. The KCNA said in an earlier report the 68-year-old leader watched a live-fire military drill that "shattered enemy lines and turned them into a sea of fire." It did not say when or where the drill took place.
Talk of a succession rose after Kim was rumored to have suffered a stroke in the summer of 2008. No clear signs of a successor were found in the official coverage of the celebration in Pyongyang on Thursday.
The festivities in North Korea contrasted with grief in South Korea where a naval ship mysteriously exploded and sank last month near the tense western inter-Korean sea border.
Workers pulled the stern of the ship out of water Thursday and searched for the bodies of 44 missing seamen.
Seoul's defense officials say they have not ruled out North Korea's involvement, but are also looking into possibilities of an internal explosion or a collision with a reef.
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