SEOUL, South Korea — North Korea said Thursday that it would place the body of Kim Jong Il on permanent display in a Pyongyang mausoleum and install his statues, portraits and memorial towers across the country.

Kim, who died Dec. 17 at age 69, is the second North Korean leader whose embalmed body will be on a public display. His father, the North’s founding president, Kim Il Sung, who died in 1994, was embalmed with the help of Russian experts and is in the Kumsusan Memorial Palace in Pyongyang.

Kim’s body will be on display there, too, the Politburo of the ruling Workers’ Party said Thursday in a report carried by the North’s official Korean Central News Agency.