Dear Leader Goes Nuclear
By BILL POWELL
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| ILLUSTRATION FOR TIME BY ETIENNE DELESSERT |
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Aside from Osama bin Laden, there's probably no one George W. Bush would rather
be rid of than Kim Jong Il, North Korea's dictator. "I loathe Kim Jong Il,"
Bush said in 2002, and his reasons were clear enough. Kim runs a Stalinist
police state, with political prisons housing tens of thousands, many of whom,
survivors have testified, are either beaten or starved to death. North Korea is
also a serial proliferator, selling ballistic missiles and, U.S. intelligence
believes, peddling critical ingredients for making nuclear weapons.
But Kim doesn't appear to be going anywhere. Having celebrated his 63rd
birthday in style—with a feast of pheasant and venison on Feb. 16—Kim decided
to announce for the first time that North Korea did in fact have nuclear
weapons and no longer wanted any part of discussions aimed at getting rid of
them. Since then, Kim has avoided confrontation with the two countries the U.S.
hoped would talk him off the nuclear ledge: China says it doesn't necessarily
believe Kim has the Bomb, and South Korea seems more interested in making sure
the North's economy doesn't collapse (since the South could get stuck with the
bill).
Kim has lately allowed a few experiments with capitalism; refugees talk of
informal private markets. And Kim once told former Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright—the last senior U.S. official to meet with him—that he was serious
about economic reform. Nukes or no nukes and whether Washington likes it or
not, Kim Jong Il may stick around long enough to prove whether he meant what he
said.
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FROM THE ARCHIVE
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