Stalin’s cult started crumbling before his corpse was cold; seven years after his death, Kim Il-Sung remains North Korea’s official head of state. The few foreign leaders who visit Pyongang are invariably presented to the massive statue of the deceased “Great Leader” and expected to lay flowers at his benevolent bronze feet. There are some signs of thawing – the woman hired to weep outside the Great Leader’s tomb have been replaced by a “Hall of Lamentation” – but North Korea under Kim Il-Jong (son of the Great Leader, “Dear Leader” for short) remains arguably the last country ruled by a Maoist government.

Sung’s philosophy of “Juche” or “self-reliance” resulted in one of the world’s most closed societies. To this day most of our “experts” on North Korea rely on guesswork, speculation, surmise and reports from detractors. This “complete self-reliance” worked for a time, until North Korea was in 1995 with disastrous flooding. Thousands perished; by some estimates, as many as 2 million North Koreans may have died in the ensuing famine. Sung’s death in 1994 also showed one of the great flaws of the “Cult of Personality;” simply put, Jong is no Kim-Il Sung. Lacking his father’s vision and charisma, under his watch North Korea has been forced to rely on humanitarian aid to prevent further starvation.

We could dismiss North Korea as an example of everything wrong with Maoism; South Korea has the world’s eleventh largest economy, while North Koreans are eating grass and tree bark. Alas, Sung took Mao’s advice about the barrel of a gun to heart. North Korea has one of the world’s largest, best and most highly disciplined armies. North Korea spends as much as 30% of its GNP on arming, equipping and training its 1.2 million man military. The North Koreans are also considered to be well on their way to acquiring the atom bomb, as well as missile technology which would allow them to hit not only Seoul but Los Angeles and points east. As if that weren’t enough, Pyongang is also rumored to have between 2,500 and 5,000 tons of biological and chemical weapons.

Jong has made some tentative steps toward opening up North Korea, but he lacks the strength of will and character required to lead North Korea into a post-Juche world. There have been allegations of Jong’s alcoholism and fondness for prostitutes; it is difficult to tell how much is true and how much disgruntled rumor. It is clear, though, that Jong is ripe for overthrow … and it is possible that his successor will be more fervent and more dangerous than he is. The State Department considers North Korea a “rogue” nation; given the strength of North Korea’s army, it is highly unlikely that North Korea will receive the Afghanistan treatment.