SEOUL - NORTH Korean leader Kim Jong Il doled out foreign-made cars to senior intelligence officials to ensure their loyalty to his youngest son when he put the 26-year-old in charge of the country's powerful spy agency, a report said on Wednesday.

The appointment is part of Mr Kim's plan to anoint the son, Kim Jong Un, as North Korea's future leader, South Korea's Dong-a Ilbo newspaper said, citing an unidentified source.

Wednesday's Dong-a Ilbo report said Mr Kim ordered senior officials at the State Security Department in March to 'uphold' Jong Un as head of the agency. Mr Kim told the officials to 'safeguard comrade Kim Jong Un with (your) lives as you did for me in the past,' the mass-market daily said.

Five luxury cars, each worth some US$80,000 (S$120,000), were given as gifts to the officials, it said.

The paper did not say which cars were given, but Mr Kim has long been known to favour Mercedes and French wine as gifts to ensure his inner circle's loyalty.

On Tuesday, the North's main Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried a remark by Mr Kim widely seen as a justification of a father-to-son succession.

'Our revolution is winning victory after victory because the bloodline' of the country's ideology of 'juche' - 'self-reliance' - has been succeeded through generations, Mr Kim was quoted as saying last month.

Mr Kim himself was anointed North Korea's leader in 1974 and formally took power when his father, founder Kim Il Sung, died in 1994.

Mr Kim appears to be boosting his public appearances to show he is fit enough to rule.

According to South Korea's Unification Ministry, which monitors North Korea, Mr Kim has made 77 public appearances this year, compared with 49 during the same period last year. -- AP