YONHAP/AP

Strange bedfellows: North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong Il, right, and South Korea's President Kim Dae Jung share a toast on the occasion of the latter's visit to North Korea. Such a meeting had long been considered unthinkable, but perhaps the 58-year-old leader of the world's most fervently communist nation came to the realization that with his economy going down the tubes and much of his nation starving, he had no choice but to soften.