A team of specialists from the institute that preserves Lenin's body is in Pyongyang to prepare for embalming the corpse of North Korea's late dictator Kim Il-sung, a top scientist at the institute said Thursday.


Confirming a report in the latest issue of Moskovskiye Novosti, Boris Khomatov, who heads the group of doctors who maintain Lenin's body on a weekly basis, said the team had left two to three weeks ago.


Yury Denisov-Nikolsky, the deputy director at the Institute of Biological Structures, was to arrange for the embalming, which might involve flying Kim-Il Sung's body to Moscow for a procedure that would take up to four months, Khomatov said.


Denisov-Nikolsky's visit apparently was intended to remain a secret, as it was flatly denied by the institute's director.


"I don't know where they got this information from," Sergei Debov said of the Moskovski Novosti report. "It is not true."


The institute's personnel officer said Denisov-Nikolsky was on a business trip, but said she did not know where he was traveling. Calls to his home and office went unanswered Thursday.


A contract to embalm Kim Il-sung would represent a significant boost for the sagging fortunes of an institute that once was among the best supplied in the USSR. In addition to preserving Lenin and Stalin, the institute has rendered its services on Vietnam's Ho Chi Minh, Bulgaria's Georgy Dimitrov and other Communist dignitaries. Several of these leaders' bodies were brought to Moscow for treatment.


The Moskovskiye Novosti report said that the institute would receive $300,000 for their work, which involves immersing the body in a chemical solution to preserve the exterior skin.


North Korea originally said it would bury its so-called "Great Leader" who had ruled the country from 1948 until his death earlier this month. After a massive outpouring of national grief, however, it was decided to extend the public visitation and preserve the body.


A similar show of affection spurred the Bolshevik leaders to reverse a previous decision to bury Lenin in 1924. His body is still lying in state in his mausoleum on Red Square today.


The collapse of Communism brought hard times to the institute which achieved worldwide fame because of its work on Lenin. The halls across several floors of the downtown institute were empty Thursday and only a handful of experts were in their laboratories. The top embalming experts of the institute are themselves no longer young, with some in their 70s and 80s.