N. Korean kindergarteners mourn Kim's death: KCNA

North Korean television showed scenes of kindergarteners weeping and crying as they mourned the death of the country's late leader Kim Jong-il but they appeared mobilized by the communist regime, analysts in Seoul said Friday.

North Korea announced through its media Monday that the 69-year-old leader died of a heart attack during a train trip two days ago. Following the announcement, grief-stricken North Koreans came out in large numbers mourning their leader's death.

On Friday, the North's Korean Central News Agency praised kindergarteners paying their respects to the late leader, saying that "children these days are like adults." The KCNA dispatch, titled "Children yearning for their father," said the kindergarteners were weeping at a Pyongyang square despite the bitter cold weather. 

According to South Korean weather officials, temperatures in Pyongyang hovered between minus six and seven degrees Celsius on Thursday, and dropped as far as minus 12 degrees on Friday, the coldest this year.

The children were carrying fairy tale books, which Kim had sent them as gifts to their kindergarten in Pyongyang, according to a teacher quoted by KCNA.

"Even kindergarten children are wailing as they bow their heads in front of (Kim's portrait) because they cannot forget the bosom of great love that is beyond comparison even with the combined love of the 10 million mothers in this land," the dispatch said.

The communist nation has a track record of mobilizing young children and elderly people in its propaganda campaign for its leaders. Kim Jong-Il inherited power from his late father and national founder Kim Il-sung in 1994. He left his third and youngest son Jong-un to carry on the hereditary power transition.

"It's possible that children were mobilized as part of an attempt to highlight the young generation in the wake of (Jong-un's succession)," Yoo Ho-yeol, a professor on North Korea at Seoul's Korea University, told Yonhap News Agency by phone.

The young Kim is believed to be in his late 20s.

In the two days following the belated announcement of his death Monday, more than 43.92 million mourners paid their respects to the late Kim Jong-il at various facilities across the country, according to Rodong Shinmun, a major newspaper published by the North's ruling Workers' Party.

North Korea is known to have a population of 24 million. (Yonhap News)