By Alex Jensen

SEOUL 

In a demonstration of the enforced reverence shown to North Korea’s ruling family, Pyongyang has ordered its people not to use the same name as leader Kim Jong-un, South Korean media reported Wednesday.

State news agency Yonhap claimed the official edict urged those already called Kim Jong-un to change their name “voluntarily.” It did not specifiy what would happen to those who declined the request.

Newborn babies are also reportedly banned from being called Jong-un, regardless of their family name. Kim is common surname in both the North and South.

Kim Jong-un took power after the death of his father, Kim Jong-il, in December 2011. His grandfather Kim Il-sung ruled from 1948 to 1994.

The timing of the name order, issued in January 2011, is evidence of Pyongyang’s succession plans at the time and the regime’s intention to carry the cult of personality on to the third generation of Dear Leaders, as the ruling Kims have styled themselves.

But observers of the secretive communist state will not be surprised by the country’s attempts to exalt Kim Jong-un. Its people have long been unable to assume the names of both his father and grandfather.

Since the country’s foundation in 1948, the North’s leaders have been steeped in legend.

Soviet records, for example, suggest Kim Jong-il was born in the fishing village of Vyatskoye, in eastern Russia, but North Korea’s official line is that his birth took place on Baekdu Mountain, an active volcano on the border between North Korea and China, and was foretold by a swallow and accompanied by a double rainbow and a new star.

On Tuesday Yonhap reported that Kim, who is often pictured smoking, had ordered senior officials not to smoke foreign brands of cigarettes as it illustrated a lack of patriotism.

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