What Can Be Done About North Korea?

Yet given the North's poor capacity for sustained military operations to “liberate” South Korea, Pyongyang is prone to use political bluster and the threat of a knockout nuclear punch.

Led by the reclusive and increasingly frail “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il (66), the DPRK has all the trappings of a communist state, but with the bizarre political cult of personality through which Kim rules. The DPRK dictatorship is a blend of totalitarianism combined with traditional Korean shamanism and ample doses of Stalinist terror.