South Korean lawmakers rapped their defense and spy agency chiefs Tuesday for a “serious intelligence failure” regarding the death of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il.

Officials in Seoul were completely blindsided by the news of Kim’s death until it was announced by Pyongyang’s state media at noon Monday, some 52 hours after his sudden demise.

Won Sei-hoon, chief of the South’s National Intelligence Service, admitted to parliamentarians that his agency failed to pick up any clue on the momentous development in the communist state.

Asked by lawmakers when he learned of Kim’s death, the spy chief said: “After North Korea announced it.”

“Other countries, including China, were in a similar situation,” Won was quoted as saying by lawmakers who attended the session. The session was closed to the media.

At a separate session on defense, Defense Minister Kim Kwan-jin also said that he learned of the development after watching the North Korean news.

“Figuring out Kim Jong-il’s death under the current defense intelligence system is somewhat limited, but I desperately feel the need to beef up our intelligence capacity,” Kim said.

Kim, 69, died of heart attack on a train at 8:30 Saturday, according to North Korea’s official announcement. Apparently, without any clue of the end of the Kim regime in the North, South Korean President Lee Myung-bak left the country for a two-day Japanese visit around noon that day.

Although Pyongyang is known for being reclusive, it is of great concern that South Korea failed to pick up any clue at all for more than two days, politicians from both ruling and opposition parties said.

A group of North Korean defectors in Seoul raised the possibility of Kim’s death online, some 20 minutes before it was officially announced, they pointed out.

“This reveals a major, major problem in our information gathering ability regarding North Korea,” Rep. Gu Sang-chan of the ruling Grand National Party said.

Rep. Kim Jin-pyo, floor leader of the main opposition Democratic Unified Party, called on the government to make a thorough analysis of possible scenarios that could play out in the North.

“Although belated, it is imperative that the government come up with a way to better collect and analyze information (on North Korea) and to calm public worries over what’s going to happen in the North,” he said.

Intelligence officials in Seoul, Washington, Tokyo and elsewhere were said to be in a frantic search for any clue on the late dictator’s 20-something year-old son and successor, Jong-un.

Little is known about his thinking and capability as a leader, not to mention the opaque and unpredictable politics in Pyongyang, which many here say, add to anxiety and worry in the South over the new North Korean regime.

By Lee Sun-young (milaya@heraldcorp.com)