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Kim Jong Il Now in ‘Warm Corner of Hell’ with Stalin, Hitler: US Senator

The body of North Korea’s long-time ruler Kim Jong Il was laid out in a memorial palace Tuesday as weeping mourners filled public plazas and state media fed a budding personality cult around his third son, hailing him as “born of heaven,” AP reports.

Indicating the leadership transition in the world’s only communist dynasty is on track, Kim Jong Un — Kim’s youngest known son and successor — visited the body with top military and Workers’ Party officials and held what state media called a “solemn ceremony” in the capital, Pyongyang, as the country mourned.

The Korean people were in “deep sorrow at the loss of the benevolent father of our nation,” Ri Ho Il, a lecturer at the Korean Revolutionary History Museum, told The Associated Press in Pyongyang.

“He defended our people’s happiness, carrying on his forced march both night and day,” Ri said.

Still images aired on state TV showed that the glass coffin holding Kim’s body was surrounded by his namesake flowers — red “kimjongilia” blossoms. He was covered with a red blanket, his head placed on a white pillow.

The coffin was in a room of the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, a mausoleum where the embalmed body of his father — national founder Kim Il Sung — has been on display in a glass sarcophagus since his death in 1994.

Kim Jong Il died of a massive heart attack on Saturday caused by overwork and stress, according to the North’s media. He was 69 — though some experts question the official accounts of his birth date and location.

With the country in an 11-day period of official mourning, flags were flown at half-staff at all military units, factories, businesses, farms and public buildings. The streets of Pyongyang were quiet, but throngs of people gathered at landmarks honoring Kim, AP video footage from Pyongyang showed.

Though US President Barack Obama is yet to voice American approach to new North Korean “Respected Comrade”, top US lawmakers have wished his father, the late Kim Jong Il, “a warm corner in hell”, alongside the likes of Muammar Gaddafi, Osama bin Laden, Hitler and Stalin.

“The world is a better place now that Kim Jong Il is no longer in it,” said Senator John McCain, a Republican lawmaker who unsuccessfully contested for president in 2008.

McCain was not alone, several other lawmakers said that Kim, called “Dear Comrade” by his colleagues, had subjected his people to “dire poverty and cruel oppression under one of the most totalitarian regimes the world has ever known.”

“I can only express satisfaction that the Dear Leader is joining the likes of Gaddafi, bin Laden, Hitler and Stalin in a warm corner of hell,” McCain said.

The state funeral is to be held at the Kamsusan Memorial Palace on Dec. 28.