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Very few do. Said Arnold Kanter, a Bush Administration Under Secretary of State who conducted previous talks with Pyongyang: "What we don't know about North Korea is so vast that it makes the Kremlin of the 1950s look like an open book." The communist northern tier of a peninsula once known as the Hermit Kingdom has lived up to that name with a vengeance, enveloping its 22 million people in a bell jar of propaganda, thought control and mythology glorifying the Kims, often in public pageants that would dwarf a Cecil B. DeMille production. What factions may exist in the leadership, who controls them and what they stand for -- all are practically pure guesswork on the part of the most diligent outside intelligence analysts. What is reputed about Jong Il -- known as the Dear Leader -- is itself a mass of contradictions: terrorist and warmonger, or would-be economic reformer and peacemaker? A pampered, pouting sorehead indifferent to responsibilities, or a relatively shrewd go-getter who has mastered much statecraft?
The weight of opinion holds that this candidate for the first dynastic succession in the dwindling communist world cannot hold a candle to his father. The North Korean myths exalting Jong Il are so elaborate as to be hilarious. As with Kim Il Sung, who was said to have nearly supernatural powers and be in several places at the same time, Kim Jong Il's life is swaddled in layers of official fable worthy of a demigod. His birth was foretold by a swallow. A double rainbow appeared over sacred Mount Paektu when he was born. The mythographers have not claimed that he was suckled by a she- wolf and tutored by centaurs, but their hyperbole in other matters is nearly that far a reach. Jong Il supposedly has mastered all knowledge, and his thoughts are studied at great world universities. In fact, his only travels outside his homeland -- a cause of real concern for other governments -- have been to communist countries, plus a stint of studies on Malta.
That lack of exposure to nations outside the world according to Marx might, in the most alarmist view, cause him to gamble disastrously on the nature of his adversaries and his chances of winning a war. At the very least, analysts believe, he seems sure to try to consolidate power by not antagonizing the military.
As of last weekend, however, the Dear Leader had still not sewn up his accession. The fact that the announcement of his father's death was delayed a full day and a half suggested to some outsiders that Kim Jong Il was busy lining up support behind the scenes. Several hours after the broadcast, a number of top Establishment figures came out with statements of allegiance to him. Even then, he was not styled President -- yet. That formality, assuming it comes, will have to wait for some quasi-coronation ceremonies at high councils of the party and state.