It has been highly speculated that phantom Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il's son, will be the next North Korea leader. Except that foreign media is unable to identify Kim Jong-un. Even the North Korean don't know his face.
Kim Jong-un is so unknown that he probably could walk through the streets of Pyongyang without anyone looking twice. Only one confirmed photograph has been released, in which he appears to be about 12 years old.
That has left the world's news media scrambling for an updated image. When South Korean intelligence reported last month that young Kim was accompanying his father on a trip to China, packs of photographers and reporters, most of them Japanese and South Korean, set off in hot pursuit.
''In this case, Kim Jong-il was definitely No.2. The photo everybody wanted was Kim Jong-un. That would have been the real victory,'' said a Chinese photographer, who asked not to be named because he previously had been arrested while trying to photograph the family.
The photographer caught up with Kim's entourage outside a hotel in the Chinese city of Changchun and snapped a photo of a man behind a partly opened curtain in a limousine.
''In the end, we didn't run the photograph because we didn't know who it was, since nobody knows what Kim Jong-un looks like,'' the photographer said. ''Anyway, my editor said the guy was too good-looking to be Kim Jong-il's son.''
Amid all the mystery about the possible young successor, the streets of Pyongyang are festooned with flags and placards announcing the Workers' Party conference.
Last week the official Korean Central News Agency announced the meeting would select its ''supreme leadership body''. Party delegates have been arriving since Sunday.
The meeting will be the party's first major gathering since a landmark congress in 1980 where the then 38-year-old Kim Jong-il made his political debut. That appearance confirmed he was in line to succeed his father, North Korea founder Kim Il-sung.
The question of who will take over from Kim Jong-il, believed to suffer a host of ailments, is important to regional security because of North Korea's active nuclear and missile programs, and regular threats it makes against South Korea.
Some experts fear instability or a power struggle if Kim were to die or become incapacitated without naming a successor. Kim Jong-un, believed to be in his 20s, has two older brothers, previously touted as possible successors.
Rodong Sinmun, the North's leading newspaper, ran an article yesterday lauding the party and emphasising its loyalty to the country's leader. ''The WPK remains so strong as its ranks are made up of ardent loyalists who unhesitatingly dedicate their lives to devotedly defending the headquarters of the revolution, sharing idea and intention and fate with the leader.''
Perhaps as early as today, North Koreans will be allowed to know the face of the next leader to whom they will ''dedicate their lives to devotedly defending''.