How Kim Jong Il controls a nation

Yet Kim reportedly micromanages the entire country. His state is a hermetically sealed cult that allows no debate; even top generals and their extended families undergo loyalty tests. A half-dozen concentration camps hold 200,000 inmates, a dozen intelligence units spy on the people and each other. North Korea has the world's fifth-largest army.

"Everything goes up to Kim, and everything comes down from him. There isn't a whole lot of lateral motion in the North," says Stephen Bradner, a civilian expert in Seoul and longtime adviser to the US military. "We often ask the wrong question. The question is not what North Korea needs, but what Kim Jong Il wants."

"I used to think Kim was irrational and unrealistic," says Lee Jong Heon, who has just published a structural analysis of the North at Chung-Ang University in Seoul. "But when you study his moves, he has kept a grip on the people, and he now heads one of eight nuclear nations. He's been highly rational from his standpoint."

One side of Kim only now emerging is how closely he stays in touch with the people. The Dear Leader is on the road, working the crowds, a great deal. Studies of Korean media show Kim averages about 150 local visits a year. He may not make live televised speeches, but he's at a school, a factory, a farm, a military base – every three days. (He shows up at a military unit once a week.) This suggests a populist streak.

"When someone you worship comes to your factory, it's a personal connection. We tend to overlook this simple fact," says Mr. Mansourov, who has tracked Kim's appearances. "Kim knows the local leaders, the opinion makers, the local cadres. He's not in a fishbowl. He may be a dictator, but he's also a populist."

Kim also appears today to be intensifying his ethnic nationalist message: Korea is different, special, unique, pure – and must remain so. The message has more affinity with Imperial-era race-based fascism in Japan, than to the Stalinism he's often depicted as emulating, argues Mr. Myers.

"The North may not have plasma TVs and shiny cars, but it has people with character and virtue, that's Kim's message," says Myers. "South Korea is physically and spiritually polluted, misogynistic, occupied by the US, [has been] sold down the river, [and] lets its young people grow soft. The real Korean spirit is being held in trust in the North – that message appeals."

There's another fact often overlooked, say North watchers: Kim is getting older. There may be a new urgency to resolve the nuclear question, to seal his dynasty.

Kim was born "Uri" or George, in Khabarovsk lower Siberia in 1942 or '43 (the date is disputed), in a medicine supply house of the Soviet 88th Reconnaissance Brigade, according to South Korean scholar Suh Dae Sook. Kim Il Sung's guerrilla brigade had been bloodied in Manchuria by the Japanese, and he escaped to Russia with his wife. Young Kim was cared for by Korean and Russian servants. This early mix of foreign contact continued later in Pyongyang, so Kim never entirely imbibed Korean habits, where "sameness" is prized. He was early an individualist – adopting different hair-styles, dress, shoes, and behavior.

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