North Korea said Saturday that its ruling Workers' Party would hold a rare meeting of delegates in September to elect a new party leadership, a move analysts in Seoul said was intended to help a son of the ailing North Korean leader, Kim Jong Il, consolidate his power as heir. The gathering will be the most important meeting of the party since it held a convention in 1980 to elect Kim to its Politburo, an event that signaled his rise to power under his father, Kim Il Sung. Saturday's announcement, carried by the North's state-run Korean Central News Agency, said only that the party was convening its representatives 'in early September to elect its highest leading body.' South Korean intelligence authorities say they have noticed an increased effort by Kim, who reportedly suffered a stroke in 2008, to hand over power to Kim Jong Un, the youngest of his three known sons. North Korea has been publicizing songs and poems implicitly praising the son, South Korea's spy chief, Won Sei-hoon, told lawmakers on Thursday. The younger Kim is also accompanying his father on his 'on-site guidance' tours of factories and military units, the South Korean news media quoted Won as telling the lawmakers in the briefing. North Korea's economic hardships are deepening, as are its conflicts with the outside world. The North's propaganda artists have produced 10 million copies of the younger Kim's portrait and are waiting for an order to distribute them, said Open Radio for North Korea, a Seoul-based website that gathers news from sources inside the North. Every household in North Korea keeps portraits of Kim and his father, who died in 1994, hanging side by side on a wall. The impending shuffle in the party leadership follows personnel changes in the military and the powerful National Defense Commission in the past year. The North's rubber-stamp parliament met this month to replace several cabinet members and appointed the elder Kim's brother-in-law, Jang Song Taek, to the No. 2 post at the defense commission. Jang is seen as a potential caretaker for Kim's son. The officials at the September meeting are likely to bestow key party titles on the son or install people loyal to him in important jobs to help him control the party from behind the scenes, analysts said. 