Pyongyang

Just a few months ago, the supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Il, appeared to be a lame duck in both senses of the term. In public appearances, he looked deathly ill after suffering a severe stroke in 2008, and preparations were reportedly underway for one of his sons to succeed him. Fast-forward to today, and Kim is lame no more. Not only has he regained his vigor, judging by his performance during recent visits by Bill Clinton and Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, but talk of his succession has also become muted.

SEOUL - North and South Korea played their own distinctive games of power politics last week. The processes of leadership selection were enacted almost simultaneously, a coincidence that defined them so sharply as to provide a classroom lesson on the differences between the two systems. North Korea got all the publicity, not all of it because of the long-range missile it insisted on firing in the face of warnings to cease and desist. There was also the huge outpouring in Pyongyang for the centennial of the birth of the nation's "Great Leader," Kim Il Sung at which his grandson, Kim Jong Un, made his maiden speech before thousands of wildly cheering soldiers.

South Korea's air force has been dropping balloons with leaflets into North Korea describing the struggle to oust Moammar Kadafi in Libya and calling on the North Koreans to rise up against their oppressors. This is a ridiculous exercise for the obvious reason that Libya is split by countless tribal and regional divisions. By contrast, North Korea is ethnically homogeneous and strongly united by a nationalist heritage deeply rooted in the struggles against the Japanese colonial occupation and three years of U.S. saturation bombing during the Korean War. More important, the South Korean leaflet barrage illustrates the utter ignorance of the conservative ruling party in the South concerning the nationalist ethos of North Korea, and thus explains why the current hard-line U.S. policy toward Pyongyang, reflecting the same lack of realism, is not working.

WASHINGTON - The spectacular failure of a North Korean rocket, and the humiliation it presumably caused the nation's young new leader, makes it likely the regime will soon test a nuclear device or take other provocative actions, according to U.S. officials and outside analysts. The United Nations Security Council condemned North Korea for Friday's launch, saying it violated two previous U.N. resolutions. And the White House said it would not honor a promise to provide 240,000 metric tons of food aid to the impoverished nation.

WASHINGTON - The spectacular failure of a North Korean rocket, and the humiliation it presumably caused the nation's young new leader, makes it likely the regime will soon test a nuclear device or take other provocative actions, according to U.S. officials and outside analysts. The United Nations Security Council condemned North Korea for Friday's launch, saying it violated two previous U.N. resolutions. And the White House said it would not honor a promise to provide 240,000 metric tons of food aid to the impoverished nation.

Although North Korea's attack last week on the island of Yeonpyeong was the first time since the Korean War that it has directed artillery fire on South Korean land, targeting civilians and homes, it follows a long pattern of calculated acts designed to compel South Korea and the United States to resort to crisis management; that is, to reward the North for little more than temporarily backing down. The response by Seoul and Washington this time should be to impose a palpable penalty on Pyongyang.

North Korea has recently made a desperate international appeal for food aid. Reports from aid workers and international nongovernmental organizations warn of a major food shortage. As the United States deliberates whether to restart a food aid program in North Korea, it must consider the following questions: Is there a true humanitarian need, can we address the potential risk of food diversion and can a properly monitored program allow us to engage with the vulnerable citizens of one of the most isolated countries in the world?

Such Middle Eastern trouble spots as Iran and Afghanistan get most of the attention in this country, but North Korea is determined to demonstrate that it is the world's biggest threat to stability. The Obama administration has few good options for dealing with Pyongyang's reckless regime, but the North's shelling of a South Korean island on Tuesday, among the most outrageous of its provocations since the end of the Korean War, shows that the region must be at the top of the diplomatic priority list.

With a flash of explosives, North Korea on Friday demolished the cooling tower for its main nuclear reactor, the concrete shell vanishing into a cloud of smoke and dust aimed at showing that the authoritarian country is sincere about dismantling its nuclear weapons program. Televising the demolition of the conical 60-foot-tall tower had been suggested by North Korea, whose leader, Kim Jong Il, is a cinema buff famous for his flare for the theatrical. It came a day after President Bush met a North Korean declaration about its nuclear program with an announcement that he would remove the Pyongyang government from the State Department's list of terrorism sponsors and lift other sanctions.

Supporters of the proposed free-trade agreement between the United States and South Korea argue that we should approve the pact to improve our economy and to reward an ally in a troubled region for its strong security relationship with the U.S., and to solidify these strong security ties with a stronger trade relationship. Though there is no doubt South Korea is a close ally, we need to ensure that the agreement does not undermine U.S. security and economic interests by benefiting North Korea.

BEIJING - For decades,North Korea's leaders have bet heavily on a stark calculation: In order to survive, they need to nurture their rocket and nuclear programs at the expense of feeding their people. Rarely have the consequences been as clear. Friday's attempted satellite launch was an inglorious failure for Kim Jong Un, the twentysomething who has been in power only four months. The launch was supposed to be the marquee event of 100th anniversary celebrations this weekend marking the birth of his grandfather, North Korea's founder, Kim Il Sung, and the emergence of the third generation of the dynasty.

Well, that didn't take long. Not even a month after the much-heralded accord in which North Korea agreed, among other things, to halt long-range missile testing, Pyongyang announced its intention to launch a satellite - with a long-range missile. This is, if nothing else, clever. The United States has put a lot of eggs into the basket of a denuclearization process and of improved relations supposedly inaugurated by the February nuclear deal. But if Washington stands by its position that this proposed satellite launch - a transparent ploy to test powerful rocket technology - would be a deal breaker, we'll be right back at square one. Pyongyang has us right where it wants us, in a sense, which shows again the bankruptcy of a policy designed to bargain for nuclear and missile concessions that the North is never going to provide.

Given North Korea'spast duplicity about its commitment to a denuclearized Korean peninsula, there is no guarantee that it will abide by its latest agreement to suspend nuclear weapons testing and uranium enrichment and permit international inspectors to return to its principal nuclear complex. Even the Obama administration, which negotiated the agreement in talks in Beijing, is publicly restraining its enthusiasm. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton called the agreement "a modest first step in the right direction" but added that the U.S. has "profound concerns" about North Korean intentions.

Robert Egan has a pretty good feel for how desperate the CIA is for scraps of information about North Korea. Egan has served barbecue to North Korean diplomats at his restaurant in Hackensack, N.J., for 15 years, and he has visited Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, several times. He also has fed details about his customers to U.S. authorities, even plucking stray hairs off their suits so American officials could trace the DNA. Not surprising, he has found FBI surveillance equipment hidden in his office.

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, the mercurial strongman extolled at home as the "Dear Leader" and reviled abroad as a tyrant, has died at 69, North Korean media reported Monday. Kim's death was announced by state television from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang. No cause of death was reported, but Kim was believed to have suffered in recent years from diabetes and heart disease. The diminutive leader was believed to have suffered a stroke in 2008 but nonetheless appeared in numerous photos released by state media as he toured state facilities and in recent months embarked on rare trips outside North Korea -?

The legacy of the late North Korean leader Kim Il Sung's decision in the early 1990s to pursue a strategic partnership with the United States has run its course. In its place, the focus of Pyongyang's policies has decisively shifted to Beijing. However wary the North Koreans may be of their neighbor, the fact is that from Pyongyang's viewpoint, the Chinese have delivered and the United States did not. Any shards remaining from the North's previous, decades-long effort to normalize ties with the U.S. were swept away by current leader Kim Jong Il's trip in May to China, his third in barely a year.

Former President Carter on Friday left the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, after negotiating the release of an American who had been imprisoned since January for illegally entering the secretive country, officials said. Carter went to North Korea this week seeking the release of Boston native Aijalon Mahli Gomes, a former English teacher in South Korea who was sentenced to eight years in prison for entering the North from China in January. North Korea's state-run media reported in July that Gomes had tried to commit suicide.

North Korea on Tuesday released a captive South Korean fishing boat as officials in Seoul considered a request from Pyongyang for emergency storm aid — gestures experts say may signal an easing of tensions on the divided Korean peninsula. The 41-ton fishing boat Daeseung 55 and its crew of four South Koreans and three Chinese were seized last month. North Korean officials said the vessel had illegally entered their nation's waters.

As humanitarian groups warn of increasing food shortages in North Korea, the authoritarian government faces diminishing prospects for international aid, with allegations from both the United States and South Korea that donations rarely reach the poor and starving. The European Union recently announced a plan to provide $14.5 million in emergency aid to the impoverished nation of 24 million as officials expressed concern at food shortages caused by seasonal flooding and a severe winter.