As the recent submarine debacle demonstrated again, North Korea remains an unpredictable, dangerous nation. Attempts to understand its actions generally founder because Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il is inaccessible, his decision-making process hard to follow. To rectify this intelligence gap, TIME INTERNATIONAL's Washington columnist imagined himself inside Kim's brain for a first-person update:

No one can figure me out. especially the Americans. They are convinced I am sitting in Pyongyang drinking cognac, watching videos, caressing actresses and wondering what my father, the Great Leader, would do. When I extended the mourning period for him from two years to three last month, they thought I was lost and trying to buy time, but it is they who are confused.

They err in thinking logically. When I invited international investors to our free-trade zone at Rajin-Sonbong in September, Americans thought that it was a sensible extension of my program to reach out to the West to build our comatose economy. Then they were baffled when I again sent our brave commandos aboard the submarine to infiltrate our soon-to-be-liberated Southern brethren. They called it a contradiction. But everyone knows that if you cannot deal with contradictions, you should stay out of Asia. And if you're looking for logic, Pyongyang is the last place to come.

There are several theories in the West for what is going on here now. One says we are split between those who wish to open up our Hermit Kingdom and my generals, who don't want to compete with our rich and corrupt neighbors. Another is that our intelligence services dispatched the submarine without authority. That is ludicrous. We have been sending submarines and commandos for years and will continue to. The only problem was this one hit a rock. It's too bad those seamen were killed before I got hold of them. Those who believe I have a purposeful strategy understand me best. I want to reach out to everyone except the South. But if I have my generals increase tension with the South and hint that if our economy collapses we may attack, unleashing millions of refugees on the peninsula, then the U.S. will do all it can to guarantee our survival, to protect us from Seoul.

Surviving, after all, is our goal. Our motherland operates on a single principle--juche, or self-reliance. Our sacred mission, as the Great Leader taught, is to liberate the South and unite our homeland. Nothing can sway our determination. There are many targets of opportunity in the South. There are thousands of disaffected students whom our agents can exploit to foster dissension and promote disorder. That we are the last genuine socialist nation means we must not stop what we are doing, but try even harder.

We are accused of being weird, but North Korea is not stupid. Our economy is in dreadful shape, worse than some of that Russian wine Yeltsin sent me. The brutal floods have been a good excuse. I'm going to ignore claims that it was actually abysmal planning and structural failure that so wiped out our agriculture that we cannot feed ourselves. It's troubling that we have had negative growth for the past half-dozen years, but that's because the soft socialists stopped supporting us. I hear that even Deng Xiaoping believes that the 20% to 25% of our gdp that I spend on defense is too much, but if I shift resources to the civilian sector, hanging on as Dear Leader may not be so easy.

While our diplomats and businessmen get food and hard currency by cheating, stealing and smuggling, I will keep working our two-pronged strategy of threatening Seoul and cajoling Washington. Why not? It works. After years of isolating us, Washington has engaged us. The U.S. arranged for us to get fuel oil and $4.5 billion worth of technical help in building nuclear reactors, so naturally we froze--I use the term loosely--our nuclear program. I couldn't believe it when the U.S. agreed to give us emergency food aid with no strings attached. They are so naive. Even the Chinese attach conditions. But if Washington wants to give us something for nothing, we'll just ask for more. I hope they don't ever decide to link aid to our boosting training, technique and productivity. I hate quid pro quos.

Two things worry me. One is that the U.S. will try to lock us into a process where we'd have to de-collectivize and cut military expenditures if we wanted aid. This could sow the seeds of our destruction. The Soviets did that and they're gone. Even Albania caved in. China was O.K. until Deng came in and went overboard on economic reform, though it's hard to argue with their agricultural and industrial success.

A worse threat is the "soft-landing" theory that is coming into vogue in Washington. That holds that the West should neither "save" us nor let us down with a bang. Instead, they would give minimal aid and string us along, not even helping us to adapt juche more flexibly. We could strangle ourselves. I hope they don't figure that out.