His eldest son Jong-Nam, 33, who is kept under wraps in the secretive Stalinist state, has burst into the overseas spotlight by allegedly sending New Year's greetings to Japanese journalists who had encountered him by chance.

The surprise messages by e-mail in early December were followed by rumors that the well-travelled presumed heir escaped an assassination plot by a group close to his younger half-brothers when he visited Austria last month.

The developments show North Korea at a crossroads as the administration of re-elected US President George W. Bush looks for ways to transform Kim Jong-Il's regime, which is refusing to return to talks on its nuclear program.

"The Austrian government told North Korean Ambassador Kim Kwang-Sop to help halt the assassination plot which it had come to be aware of," said foreign affairs analyst Masayuki Koike, a former Japanese diplomat.

Koike, a professor at the Japanese Red Cross College of Nursing, told AFP that he had learned of the warning through an Austrian diplomatic contact. "I think there is a move to eliminate Kim Jong-Nam."

Japan's national intelligence agency said last week a "feud or confrontation" may be arising in the course of selecting an heir to Kim Jong-Il, who took over the reign from his father and the country's founder Kim Il-Sung who died in 1994.

Speculation about a power struggle has been rife particularly after Kim Jong-Il's latest wife Ko Yong-Hui reportedly died last May after a battle with cancer.

Ko had allegedly campaigned to have one of her two sons groomed as heir apparent rather than Jong-Nam. She was the mother of Kim Jong-Il's second son Jong-Chul, 23, and third son Jong-Woon, 21.

South Korea's intelligence agency said last month that Jang Song-Taek, a brother-in-law of Kim Jong-Il, was stripped of power early this year after he was accused of creating his own faction within the military.

Waseda University professor Toshimitsu Shigemura said Jong-Nam was suspected at home of being connected to US intelligence. His family is reported to have defected to the United States, he added.

"The suspicion may possibly have led to the alleged assassination plot," the prominent Pyongyang watcher said, adding Jong-Nam's message to Japanese journalists might be aimed at "cultivating relations with media just in case."

South Korea's Yonhap news agency, quoting an unnamed government source, last week became the first to report about the attempt on Jong-Nam's life.

In Vienna, the interior ministry spokesman, Rudolg Gollia, denied the conspiracy.

But he admitted that the heir made a private visit to Austria at the beginning of December and was afforded "standard" security at the request of the North Korean embassy.

A rare North Korean foreign exchange bank is located in Vienna and Kim Jong-Nam, believed to be charged with the communist state's information-technology development, has frequently visited there.

Pyon Jin-Il, the editor of the Tokyo newsletter Korea Report, said the Yonhap report could be based on "disinformation from an anti-Kim Jong-Il group in Seoul to shake his regime by a psychological operation."

But he added that Kim Jong-Il, 62, would be forced to choose his successor in 2005 to "prevent the succession struggle from aggravating."

In one of his e-mails with Japanese reporters, the man who claimed to be Kim Jong-Nam said: "My father has the absolute say (over succession). It is unknown what idea he may have."

The man ran into the journalists and spoke on camera at Beijing airport in September when the reporters were waiting for the arrival of a North Korean delegation to talks with Japan.

He was given business cards from a handful of reporters who received the seasonal greetings from him on December 3.

Photo comparisons showed that he was identical to Kim Jong-Nam -- up to several moles on his face -- who was paraded before Japanese media when he was deported from in May 2001 for trying to enter Japan with a forged passport, allegedly with the intention of visiting Tokyo Disneyland.

The man halted on-line exchanges with the reporters four days later after they tried to verify his identity with intrusive questions.

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