Kim Jong Il’s nuclear bombshell

SINCE inheriting power in 1994, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has gained an international reputation for being an unpredictable leader, as his intransigence deepened his country’s isolation.

Abroad, many consider the pudgy, bouffant-haired Mr Kim a ruthless dictator who seeks atomic weapons, while starving his people. At home, state-run media hails the “Dear Leader” as a prodigious general and an ace film director.

Mr Kim’s nuclear standoff stretches back to 2002, when Washington accused North Korea of having a secret nuclear weapons program in violation of an earlier agreement, and US president Bush branded the communist country part of an “axis of evil,” alongside Iraq and Iran.

Mr Kim, 64, has since taken North Korea on an increasingly confrontational path — including withdrawal from the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty — that culminated in yesterday’s claim of nuclear weapons test.

The demonic image of Mr Kim, however, goes back years before he took power. It is based in part on suspicions that he masterminded a 1983 terrorist bombing in Myanmar that killed 17 South Korean officials, as well as the 1987 bombing of a South Korean airliner, which killed all 115 people aboard.

Mr Kim has ruled his impoverished country with a “military first” policy since the 1994 death of his father and North Korea’s founder, Kim II Sung. He controls the world’s fifth-largest military, the 1.1 million-strong People’s Army.

Going nuclear will solidify Mr Kim’s authoritarian rule, and gives North Korea an unparalleled deterrent from attack, something increasingly feared by the regime after the United States toppled Saddam Hussein by invading Iraq.