From the Halls to the Shores

"Getting rid of portraits is a very serious gesture. Portraits of Kim Jong-il are different from, say, a portrait of a head of state somewhere else. If you're starting to get rid of icons it means that something is wrong with your god."

Side-by-side pictures of the 63-year-old "Dear Leader" and his late father, Kim Il-sung, are standard decoration in public places, government offices, schools and other buildings in the Stalinist state, Lankov said.

The Russian news agency Itar-Tass cited an unnamed diplomat as saying that at receptions hosted by Pyongyang's foreign ministry, guests had seen pictures of Kim Il-sung, but only a mark on the wall nearby where a portrait of the current leader hung before.

A North Korean diplomatic source in Beijing denied the reports about the portraits, telling Russia's Interfax news agency that "everything remains the same in Pyongyang."
An official at North Korea's Embassy in Moscow also said the reports were false. "You cannot take down the sun from the sky - it's impossible,"

There was no public funeral, but North Koreans noticed that extravagant praise for a figure called Omonim ("respected mother") had vanished from propaganda documents.

In Seoul, a government intelligence analyst reported that in recent days North Korea's state radio had shifted one catch phrase from "Kim Jong Il, ruling according to the Kim Il Sung legacy" to simply "Ruling by Kim Il Sung."