A situation develops

The last time North Korea faced off in a nuclear confrontation with the United States, in 1994, Kim Jong Il was largely running the country from the shadows, but had not assumed total control. As tensions reached the brink of armed conflict, his father, the self-styled "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung, stepped in and struck a key compromise, according to diplomats and others. But the father died shortly after the 1994 deal to abandon a nuclear programme. This time, his son is solely in charge.

"If Kim Jong Il had been in complete control then, he might have been a little more daring," said Han Sung-joo, who was South Korea's foreign minister at the time. "Now, we don't have a Kim Il Sung to moderate."

As the world focuses anew on North Korea, seeking to calculate how far Kim Jong Il will go, this is the portrait that emerges: Like his father, he is inclined toward confrontation. He prefers to press for a deal through escalation of threats. But Kim Jong Il may be willing to go even further than his father in challenging the United States and threatening to build more nuclear weapons.

"He looks very irrational, very dangerous and very unpredictable," said Choi Jin-wook, a North Korea expert at the Korea Institute for National Reunifica-tion, a research body affiliated with the South Korean government in Seoul. "This is Kim Jong Il's style."

While the elder Kim never publicly admitted pursuing nuclear weapons, cloaking his efforts as energy projects, Kim Jong Il has acknowledged his ambitions to build a bomb. Diplomats take that as a sign that he is more desperate than during the last crisis, at once coping with a dreadful economy, strained relations with his most critical ally - China - and a sense of insecurity deepened by President Bush's decision to label his country part of an "axis of evil."

He may also be unable to back down, lest he appear weak in the eyes of North Korean generals. He lacks the military credentials of Kim Il Sung, according to Han. "He has a greater need than his father to show his macho," he said.

Still, diplomats and North Korea experts see potentially crucial differences between the last crisis and the forces at work around Kim Jong Il today. He has invested time and effort to engage the outside world and improve relations with his former adversaries. Despite the evident paranoia and bluster in recent months, they say, Kim Jong Il may eventually be ready to compromise.

A Western diplomat noted that in recent days North Korea has softened its conditions for talks with the United States. Where once it called for a resumption of cancelled fuel oil shipments from the United States along with a non-aggression pact, its most recent formulations have demanded only a security guarantee.

But other analysts caution that Kim's sense of desperation and eagerness for a deal could work in the opposite direction, inspiring him to escalate further, employing the only means he and his father have ever known to conduct business with the outside world - brinkmanship.

"This is consistent with their pattern," said Mohamed ElBaradei, director general of the UN nuclear watchdog, the International Atomic Energy Agency, in an interview shortly after his inspectors were expelled from North Korea last month. "By escalating a situation into a crisis situation, they believe they will get a more advantageous negotiating position and get their security and economic needs catered to."

'Strange hairdo'

Kim Jong Il, now 60, was mostly an enigma when he assumed power following his father's death in 1994. The elder Kim had been an imposing figure who appeared to enjoy the pomp and regalia of Stalinist ritual. The younger Kim seemed nervous and uncomfortable in public. South Koreans were struck by this "short, dumpy-looking character with a strange hairdo," as one diplomat put it.

Kim also had a reputation for cruelty. He had enemies burned alive, according to a U.S. intelligence report. He loved film and actresses, and once ordered a show business pair kidnapped from South Korea to entertain him, the couple disclosed after escaping. And he had a penchant for cognac and fast cars. But beyond that, little was known.

Many expected Kim's ascent would bring change, particularly to the economy. He courted investment from South Korea and launched tourism and free trade zones inside North Korea. He sought to transcend North Korea's isolation, hosting former secretary of state Madeleine Albright and Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. His summit with South Korea's president, Kim Dae-jung, in 2000 did much to change the world's image of North Korea's leader.

The South Korean president concluded that his counterpart in the North enjoyed "an ability to be receptive to new ideas and a willingness to change his views," according to Korea expert Don Oberdorfer, a former Washing-ton Post staff writer who quoted him in his book, The Two Koreas. The North Korean leader "didn't appear to be a cold-minded theoretician, but a very sharp personality," Kim Dae-jung was quoted as saying.

Though still reclusive, Kim Jong Il seems far more interested in the outside world than was his father. According to diplomats, he spends two hours a day surfing the Internet and watching television - from CNN to South Korean programming and Hollywood movies. When a group of officials from Seoul visited him in Pyongyang in April, Kim amazed them with his encyclopedic knowledge of South Korean soap operas, according to Choi, and quizzed them on whether they had watched a recent episode to its end.

Unlike his father, he has many channels of communication with other countries. Groups from North and South Korea meet to discuss issues from co-ordinating visits of separated family members to new economic projects. Britain now has an embassy in Pyongyang.

Yet the glimpses of Kim that seep out through his encounters with outsiders suggest a disjointed and incomplete view of the world. In a recently published book, a Russian general, Konstantin Pulikovsky, recounts a series of lengthy conversations with Kim in 2001 as he accompanied the North Korean leader in his private armoured rail car during a journey to Moscow for a visit with President Vladimir Putin. They discussed topics from the beauty of dancers in Paris to the price of Italian shoes and Kim's view of his public image.

Brinkmanship

Even if Kim does have a better grasp of how the world operates, it does not necessarily translate to a greater inclination to avoid confrontation. His knowledge may simply make him a more sophisticated practitioner of the family's traditional craft of brinkmanship.

Many observers have been struck by what appears to be Kim's impeccable timing. He brought the current crisis to a head as the Bush administration sought to focus on a looming war in Iraq. He is exploiting favourable conditions in South Korea, where a wave of anti-Americanism has given him an opportunity to drive a wedge between the South and the United States. He appears to understand that the United States is deeply reluctant to wage war here and cannot deliver on past threats to pursue sanctions at the UN Security Council, because Russia and China would oppose them. This has allowed Kim to escalate again and again with little risk of military confrontation.

Kim is now being advised by the same in