Rare photos of Kim Jong-il's youngest son, Kim Jong-un, released

Larking about with classmates and making playful V-signs for the camera, the boy who is now tipped to be the next leader of the hermit dictatorship of North Korea appears not to have a care in the world.

These photographs purportedly of Kim Jong-un, the reclusive third son of North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il, were released on Tuesday by South Korea's national Yonhap news agency, providing a unique glimpse into the privileged life of the country's elite.

Taken between 1996 and 2001, while Kim junior was a teenager studying at international school in Bern, Switzerland, the pictures show a grinning Kim at ease with his friends at a time when his countrymen were suffering a man-made famine that killed up to 2 million people.

Until now, the only verified picture of Kim Jong-un was a grainy black-and-white snapshot of him as an 11-year-old.

Last month a Japanese newspaper has published an unverified photo of a man it claimed was the elusive heir-apparent pictured as an adult.

The pictures, which have not yet been verified by South Korea's National Intelligence Service, could provide another small piece in the puzzle that is Kim Jong-un, who has been kept out of the spotlight despite being groomed for the succession.

On Monday, analysts said Kim Jong-un had taken a step closer to power after his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, was promoted to the North's all-powerful National Defence Commission in anticipation of his role as "regent" to the politically inexperienced 27-year-old.

Reports on Kim Jnr's earlier life, pieced together from the recollections of former classmates, say that he was enrolled at two Bern schools as a child of a North Korean embassy employee using the assumed name "Pak-un".

He is said to be able to speak good English, as well as French and German and to enjoy the privileges of his birth, on one occasion chauffeuring a school friend to Paris to watch an NBA basketball game.

"We were just playing basketball -- now he is going to be a dictator," one friend from his boarding school days told The Washington Post. "I hope he is a good leader, but dictators are usually not that good."

After leaving school in 2001, Kim is believed to have been enrolled in a military academy in Pyongyang in preparation for his designated future role that would see him follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, Kim Il-sung, as the absolute ruler of North Korea.

More recently, he has been described in reports as overweight, diabetic, and possibly prone to health conditions in the wake of a car accident.

Some first-hand insight into the character of Kim Jnr has comes from Kenji Fujimoto, a Japanese sushi chef who worked for Kim Jong-il and described the then young Kim as a "chip off the old block" - a calculating young man who always sought to be in control.

In his memoirs, Mr Fujimoto said it was apparent from an early age that Kim Jong-un would succeed his father, usurping his two older brothers, Jong-chul, who was rejected as weak and "girlish" and Kim Jong-nam, who fell out with his father because of his gambling habit and "wayward lifestyle".

"Jong-un will be his father's successor. Everyone used to say it. He looked and acted just like him", the chef wrote, admitting he only dared refer to the young Kim as "Prince".

"When he shook hands with me, he stared at me with a vicious look. I cannot forget the look in the Prince's eyes. It's as if he was thinking: This guy is a despicable Japanese'."