SEOUL, SOUTH KOREA - NORTH Korean leader Kim Jong-Il did not appear at a massive parade marking the communist country's 60th anniversary on Tuesday, news agencies reported, fuelling speculation he may have fallen ill.

South Korea's Yonhap news agency, which monitored North Korean television, said Mr Kim was absent from the parade of reserve military forces.

Japan's Kyodo news agency, reporting from Pyongyang, also said Mr Kim did not appear, unlike in 1998 and 2003. The 66-year-old is known to suffer from diabetes and heart problems, according to Seoul officials.

The paper, quoting an embassy source, said the intelligence came from Chinese sources and the mission was trying to verify it.

Yonhap said the parade of Worker and Peasant Red Guards was inspected by the North's titular number two Kim Yong-Nam, flanked by Jo Myong-Rok, from the stage where the top leader would customarily stand.

Mr Jo is vice chairman of the National Defence Commission, the North's highest military body which is chaired by Kim Jong-Il.

An official at South Korea's unification ministry, which handles cross-border relations, told AFP it would be unusual if Mr Kim had failed to appear for such an important event.

Kyodo said the parade of reserves and Pyongyang residents filled Kim Il-Sung Square, which can hold about 100,000 people.

It said military equipment such as anti-aircraft and anti-tank artillery were on display, but not tanks and missiles. The regular army, navy and air force did not take part.

Sungkyunkwan University political science professor Kim Il-Young agreed Mr Kim's absence was unusual but said it was premature to attribute it to health problems.

'It is possible that he just stayed away for other reasons,' Mr Kim told AFP.

'He has nothing to show his people, with a deadlock in nuclear disarmament talks and in normalisation talks with Japan on top of food shortages.

'Or he is thinking about something unusual like a nuclear test to break the current deadlock.'

Yonhap said North Korean TV aired footage of the event at 9pm (7pm Singapore time).

A unification ministry official told AFP the parade was staged during the day. The official news agency had carried no report on it by late evening.

State media in North Korea, virtually the last outpost of Cold War-era communism, heaped praise on Mr Kim despite acute food shortages, a foundering economy and a deadlocked aid-for-disarmament nuclear deal.

'There is no limit to the ideological and mental power of the military and the people united firmly under their leader,' said Rodong Sinmun, the newspaper of the ruling party.

'We should continue to make utmost efforts to strengthen the military power of our republic,' the editorial said, adding that it became a peerless military power with 'a strong war deterrent' due to Mr Kim's leadership.

The 'war deterrent' is a reference to the nuclear programme which the North promised to shut down after an atomic weapons test in 2006.

But it has halted work to disable its plutonium-producing plants, and says it will start repairing them, following a deadlock in a six-nation disarmament deal.

The North's regular military numbers some 1.1 million but the country relies on foreign aid to feed millions.

Its economy shrank 2.3 per cent in 2007 from a year earlier, its second straight year of contraction as devastating floods hit harvests, the South Korean central bank said in June.

However, the austere capital Pyongyang has been refurbished for the anniversary and decorated with flowers and flags. Slogans extol the virtues of Kim and of his father and founding president Kim Il-Sung, who died in 1994.

'Victory and glory for 60 years,' read some.

Nuclear disarmament work has halted because of a dispute between the North and its negotiating partners about ways to verify the nuclear inventory it handed over in June.

Washington has refused to remove the North from a terrorism blacklist until agreement on verification is reached. -- AFP