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Despite his early dependence on the Soviets, Kim has become one of the world's most independent Communist rulers. This is partly a result of his deft ability to play Peking and Moscow off against each other. Probably more important, however, has been Kim's emphasis on chuch'e. As far back as the early 1950s, notes American University Political Scientist Rinn Sup Shinn, Kim became convinced that "North Korea's survival would be in peril if it did not achieve economic and military self-sufficiency." As a result, Kim has been driving his country's labor force at a brutal pace in order to industrialize.
To some extent, Kim has succeeded. From the nearly total ruins of the war, an industrial plant has been constructed that uses technologically obsolete methods to exploit the country's rich deposits of coal, copper, lead, zinc and a score of other important minerals. Historically a food-deficit area, North Korea today can at least feed its people a subsistence diet. To be sure, North Korean cities are depressingly drab, life remains hard, and even the most basic consumer goods are of poor quality and in chronically short supply. Moreover, Pyongyang is so overextended that it has been defaulting on foreign loans.
The North Koreans, nonetheless, enjoy low-cost housing, old-age pensions and free schooling and medical care. While its living standard lags far behind South Korea's and its foreign trade of $1.1 billion is only a tenth the size of Seoul's, the North has forged well ahead of such Asian Communist states as China, Mongolia and North Viet Nam.
Kim's major goal remains the unification of the Korean peninsula under his rule. Because U.S. troops as well as Seoul's armed forces frustrate that effort, Kim has waged a savagely virulent anti-U.S. campaign. His determination to harass and humiliate Washington into withdrawing its troops was probably behind North Korea's capture of the U.S.S. Pueblo and its crew in January 1968 and the downing of an unarmed U.S. reconnaissance plane over international waters 16 months later. This temporarily earned him a reputation as an "outlaw Communist," and a top U.S. official, appalled by his unpredictability, only last week referred to him as "a lunatic." Kim has successfully courted other countries, however: Pyongyang now has diplomatic relations with 81 nations, v. 93 for Seoul.
There are rumors that Kim's nepotism is so deep-dyed that he is grooming his son Kim Jong Il, 35, as his successor. But neither Western nor Asian observers are sure. In fact all they can say with complete certainty about Kim Il Sung is that he is xenophobic, chauvinistic, ambitious, egocentric and thoroughly unpredictable—a combustible mix in a man with a modern army of nearly half a million and reserves of 2 million at his command.