Kim Jong Il is neither insane nor stupid.
From the CIA’s psychological profilers to his many biographers, experts who have studied the North Korean leader believe that beneath the glaring eccentricities – the bouffant hairdo and the oddball Mao suits – there is a shrewd operator at work.
Despite an image as a “nut with a nuke,” as some bloggers have disparaged him, Kim appears to have carefully orchestrated his country’s path to nuclear sovereignty.
If the test is confirmed, one of the world’s poorest and most dysfunctional countries will have become an unlikely gate-crasher in the exclusive club of nuclear powers, an achievement that Kim apparently believes will ensure the top item on his agenda – maintaining power.
In Kim’s eyes, a nuclear weapon should prevent the United States from attempting to topple him from his post in the manner it did Iraq’s Saddam Hussein.
“In the eyes of the North Korean leaders, this was very calculated and rational behavior,” said Paik Hak-soon, a political scientist at South Korea’s Sejong Institute. “Nobody invades a nuclear power. People respect nuclear power.”
Biographers over the years have frequently made the point that Kim did not merely inherit power. He seized it. Short, dumpy and lacking in personal charm, the younger Kim had to fight his way through other possible successors before taking over in 1994, upon the death of his father, Kim Il Sung.
Far less popular domestically than his father, Kim also has had his hands full staying in control – especially given the economic basket case that North Korean became under his watch.
Jerrold Post, founder of the CIA’s Center for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behavior and who now teaches at George Washington University, says Kim has had a tougher act to follow than other filial heirs to power because his father was revered literally as God.
“You have other world leaders whose fathers led before them – King Abdullah of Jordan, Bashir Assad of Syria – but their job pales in comparison to Kim Jong Il. … He had to be the son of God and to sustain the charismatic cult of personality,” Post said.
A psychiatrist by training, Post does not believe Kim is psychotic but that he has a dangerous personality disorder that he diagnoses as “malign narcissism.” As such, Kim has loyalty only to himself and lacks the ability to consider other people’s feelings.
Kim’s blatant disregard for his own people allowed him to become one of Asia’s top gourmets at a time when up to 20 percent of North Korea’s population died of starvation. To indulge his private whims, he is said to have imported a sushi chef from Japan and a pizza maker from Italy.
Post, who also has profiled Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, says it is no coincidence that both North Korea and Iran accelerated their development of nuclear weapons after President Bush lumped them in the “axis of evil” and proceeded with the invasion of Iraq. Both had reason to be fearful of a U.S. attack.
“Even if you say that Kim Jong Il is paranoid, it doesn’t mean that someone was not out to get him,” Post said.
Reclusive leader
Kim Jong Il is Kim Il Sung’s eldest son by his late first wife, Kim Jung Sook. North Korea says he was born Feb. 16, 1942, in a “secret camp” at Mount Paekdu on the North Korea-China border when his father was supposedly a guerrilla fighter against the Japanese.
Western officials say he was born in the Soviet Union.
Short and rotund at 5 feet 3 inches and 187 pounds, he wears platform shoes and a bouffant hairstyle to appear taller. Khaki jumpsuits and sunglasses are his trademark attire.
Source: The Associated Press
