Leader Gets Pledge of Loyalty, Media Say

North Korean soldiers pledged to be suicide bombers for “Great Leader” Kim Jong Il on the eve of his 58th birthday, the nation’s official media reported. All people should “devotedly defend him with a sense of obligation and faith and in the spirit of human bombs and suicide bombers,” said Kim Il Chol, vice chairman of the North’s powerful National Defense Commission. His remarks, made before 6,000 people at a theater in the capital, Pyongyang, were carried by the Korean Central News Agency, the North’s overseas news outlet. North Korea has held weeklong celebrations for Kim Jong Il’s birthday, which is today.