North Korean leader Kim Jong-il's son, Kim Jong-un, took the media spotlight for the second time amid a massive military parade during Sunday's celebration of the 65th anniversary of the communist state's ruling party in Pyongyang's Kim Il-sung Square.

Cameras of the rarely invited international television networks feasted on Kim Jong-un in what appeared to be Pyongyang's calculated publicity campaign to show the nation and the international community who will be the next in charge after his father, Kim Jong-il.

The state-run television led the first live coverage of the event and showed the two Kims in their Mao suit occasionally clapping hands from the reviewing stand in a gesture of pride to missile trucks and other military hardware of North Korea rumbling in the square. They also saluted the thousands of North Korean soldiers marching in neat formation in the usual display of the country's military might.

The elder Kim later received a congratulatory message from Chinese President Hu Jintao delivered by Zhou Yongkang, a member of China's powerful Politburo Standing Committee.

A day earlier, the youngest son of Kim Jong-il made his first public appearance and debut with foreign diplomats at the Arirang mass games.

The past weeks saw the son's elevation to power starting with his promotion to four-star general and his designation as the No. 2 man in the powerful Workers' Party of Korea led by his father.

The assumption of power by the youngest son of the leader will become the second hereditary transfer of power in the history of communism. Kim Jong-il also assumed power when his father died in 1994.