SEOUL - Scepticism is growing about the prospect of a second dynastic succession as North Korea prepares for a rare meeting expected to endorse the process, a welfare group with cross-border contacts said Wednesday.

The North's ruling communist party is expected to start a four-day conference on Saturday, South Korea's Good Friends group cited its sources in the hardline state as saying.

The conference of key delegates, the first of its kind since 1966, is widely expected to anoint leader Kim Jong Il's youngest son Jong-Un as eventual successor, even though a formal announcement is unlikely.

The 68-year-old ailing leader stressed the need to prepare for the "rising generation" and visited sites linked to his own late father and founding president Kim Il-Sung during a five-day trip to ally China that ended Monday.

Analysts saw the site visits as a bid to confer legitimacy on another father-to-son succession.

The party meeting is scheduled for the first half of September but no date has been announced. The South's unification ministry said it may be held next week.

Good Friends quoted party officials as saying the meeting would focus on shaping new policies and electing new party delegates who may include the son.

Delegates may swear an oath of allegiance to Jong-Un, it said.

The group's director Lee Seung-Yong said the elder Kim may reshuffle the party hierarchy or set out new policies in a bid to ease widespread public anger at worsening economic problems including severe food shortages.

"Ordinary people in the country are not interested in the father-to-son transfer of power. They think their living standards will not improve even if the son inherits power," he told AFP.

Many senior party officials are also sceptical about Jong-Un, given his youth and inexperience, Lee said.

The Swiss-educated son is believed to be aged around 27 but little is known about him outside the reclusive country. No adult photograph of him has been seen overseas.

Good Friends said in its newsletter that Kim may formalise the power transfer on the party's 65th anniversary on October 10 by allowing his son to make a public speech.

"But it's difficult for senior party officials to nod their consent if the inexperienced son is upheld as the next leader only because of his family line," an unidentified party official was quoted as saying.

Dongguk University professor Kim Yong-Hyun predicted the meeting may take place next week, around the time when the North celebrates the anniversary of its founding on September 9, 1948.

He said Jong-Un could be named to a senior post but may join the party's top decision-making body only later, possibly in 2012.

Kim Jong-Il was named in 1980 as successor to Kim Il-Sung but did not formally assume his father's posts until 1997, three years after his father's death.

He suffered a stroke in August 2008 and has since then reportedly been speeding up plans for another succession.

Kim has set 2012, the 100th anniversary of his late father's birth, as the year for the North to become a "great, powerful and prosperous" nation.

But failed policies, including a botched currency revaluation last November, have aggravated a dire economic situation and food shortages.