Day of the Shining Star
Kim Jong-il was born in February 1941 to Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-suk in Siberia in the Russian Federal Republic, Soviet Union where his father had been in exile because of his guerilla activities. North Korean propaganda, however, dates Kim Jong-il's birth to 16 February 1942 and locates it at the Mount Paektu area in Korea, the mythical place of origin of the Korean people, where Kim Il-sung supposedly ran a guerilla camp. In reality, the guerillas were based in Manchuria at the time and Kim himself had been to the Soviet Far East before and after Kim Jong-il's birth.
Kim Jong-il (athlete)
In January 1985, Kim competed at the inaugural World Indoor Games in Paris. Here, he finished in eleventh place with 7.31 metres. Only four days earlier he had jumped 7.84 metres in a meet in Osaka. In 1986, Kim would try to defend his gold medal in the 1986 Asian Games, which was this time staged in Seoul in his home country. Kim again jumped 7.94 metres, which was enough to win the gold medal, two centimetres ahead of Junichi Usui and fourteen ahead of Chen Zunrong. Kim also entered as a part of the South Korean 4 x 100 metres relay team, and eventually won a bronze medal. In 1986 to 1987 he had lived in the United States to train with the Houston Cougars under the University of Houston.