Kim Jong Il's death comes just days after a bilateral meeting in Beijing between U.S. and DPRK officials, at which special envoy for human rights Robert King held talks with a senior DPRK foreign ministry official. Unconfirmed press reports in Seoul say that at the meeting Pyongyang agreed to allow inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency back in to the country, to impose a moratorium on nuclear and missile tests, and to suspend its uranium enrichment program — in return for 240,000 tons of food aid. However, analysts believe that this diplomatic momentum may be slowed by Kim's death. As Kim Jong Un consolidates his political power, "North Korea will become even more inward looking, at least for a while," says Bruce Klingner, senior fellow at the Heritage Institute and a former North Korea watcher at the CIA.

The good news, for an outside world that lives in fear of erratic behavior from the North, is that the younger Kim has had three years to prepare for the assumption of dictatorial power. "There s less of a concern about instability now than had Kim Jong Il died three years ago," Klingner says. At the same time, the DPRK has only gone through a transition like this once before, and that was when Kim Jong Il was 52-years-old. The country is now once again having problems feeding itself, its economy is moribund, and problems are falling to a 29-year-old to fix. It's a safe bet that if North Korea's propaganda artists haven't already prepared new iconography depicting the youngest Kim alongside his father and grandfather at Baekdu-san, they're certainly busy at it now.

— With reporting by Stephen Kim/Seoul