Word: pyongyang
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...very knowledgeable about what goes on in the international scene," South Korean President Kim Dae Jung recently told TIME. And yet Kim apparently is convinced that he will someday go to war with the U.S. According to Kim Hyun Shik, a former professor at Kim Il Sung University in Pyongyang, the North Korean leader watched the Gulf War closely and even ordered a film produced that analyzed the weak points of the U.S. military. The conclusion: Iraq lost because it lacked the will to attack U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia and explode gas and oil pipelines. He made his military...
...sure the North Koreans have the skill to make a nuclear device small enough to load onto its missiles. But if they do, the danger is great. Pyongyang wields a huge stash of short-and medium-range missiles, including at least 100 Nodong missiles capable of striking Japan. U.S. intelligence officials say Pyongyang wants to become the first rogue state capable of striking the U.S. homeland with a missile. In 1998 the North Koreans test-fired a three-stage Taepo Dong-1 rocket that landed in the Pacific Ocean. The Pentagon believes that North Korea is developing an intercontinental ballistic...
...failed to devise a strategy to thwart Kim's ambitions before he realizes them. Many Korea watchers in Washington say the White House's rhetorically bellicose approach toward Pyongyang--underlined recently by Bush's declaration that "I loathe Kim Jong Il," made to the Washington Post's Bob Woodward--has heightened the regime's paranoia about a U.S. attack and accelerated its nuclear rush. Says Derek Mitchell, who worked on Asia policy in the Clinton Pentagon: "People talk about North Korea being crazy, but it's not. It's purely rational for a nation with no assets being threatened...
...death in 1994, Kim has overseen a collapsing economy and a famine that killed more than 2 million people. The government cultivates a cult of personality around Kim--citizens are told to treat him as a demigod, and pictures of father and son hang in every public building in Pyongyang--but popular disgruntlement is growing, as North Koreans returning from China's boomtowns dispel any notion that life is better inside the Hermit Kingdom...
There are even reports of rising dissatisfaction among the elite as the regime stumbles from crisis to crisis and corruption increases. A U.S. intelligence source says a Washington-led embargo against Pyongyang would take time to loosen the regime's grip on power, since Kim has already shown that he's "willing to let a lot of people die off." But eventually sanctions might take their toll, as even top government officials and members of the security services began to feel the pinch. "If the regime can no longer maintain the lifestyles of [those] people," says the source, "it could...