North Korea has been using Bill Clinton's visit to Pyongyang last week to promote leader Kim Jong-Il's son as the communist nation's next head of state, a news report said Sunday.
Former US president Clinton traveled to Pyongyang last week to take home two journalists jailed for having illegally entered North Korea.
Seoul's Yonhap news agency, quoting an unnamed source, said Pyongyang's National Security Agency was praising Kim Jong-Un, third son and heir apparent to Kim Jong-Il, 67, for having engineered the episode.
According to Yonhap, the North's powerful secret police said in a recent "internal lecture" that "General Kim Jong-Un's artifice let former US president Clinton cross the Pacific to apologise to the Great Leader (Kim Jong-Il).
"It was all made possible thanks to General Kim Jong-Un's extraordinary prophecy and outstanding tactics."
Washington has denied that Clinton gave any apology.
Yonhap said the North's move was part of a campaign by Pyongyang to promote Jong-Un as the country's next leader.
Seoul's National Intelligence Service declined to comment on the report.
North Korea, the world's first communist dynasty, used similar campaigns when Kim Jong-Il was preparing to inherit power from his father Kim Il-Sung, who founded the country, Yonhap said.
In 1968, the North's regime praised Kim Jong-Il, then 26, for having masterminded the seizure of a US military ship, Pueblo, off its east coast. The US crew were released only after a high-profile apology.
Jong-Un, now 26, is said to have been named the successor to Kim Jong-Il, who reportedly suffered a stroke in August last year.
Sources in Seoul's unification ministry, handling cross-border relations, say North Koreans have recently begun calling Jong-Un "General" in an apparent sign that he is being groomed to take over as leader.
The international media know little about Jong-Un, who was reportedly schooled in Switzerland, and have only shown a photograph of him as a child.
After returning from Pyongyang last week, Clinton was tight-lipped about his visit except to say he had not gone beyond the US State Department's previous expression of regret over the incident.
The White House has refuted reports by Pyongyang's official media that Clinton apologised for the journalists' conduct.
