The nation’s intelligence chief says that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il continues to maintain strong control over the North despite recent foreign news reports that he was preparing to install a collective leadership.

At South Korea's annual conference of overseas missions’ chiefs on Monday, National Intelligence Service Director Kim Man-bok said that the North Korean leader’s power remained unshaken despite prolonged economic troubles and the growing influx of western culture.

The intelligence chief added that rumors of a failed coup and the mass exodus of political prisoners in the North were distorted, originating from the communist state’s winter military exercises and border patrol inspections.