One hateful little man!

Read the Article

The weird and scary saga of how an isolated, bankrupt nation went nuclear—and how the United States failed to stop it.


By Michael Hirsh, Melinda Liu and George Wehrfritz
Newsweek
Oct. 23, 2006 issue - Great historical events can spring from small slights. Kaiser Wilhelm never forgave the French for not treating him to a parade in Paris. "The monarchs of Europe have paid no attention to what I have to say," the German emperor whined before setting the Continent aflame in 1914. By many accounts, North Korea's Kim Jong Il also suffers from a tender ego. For one thing the 5-foot-3 dictator is sensitive about his height (hence, one suspects, his bouffant hairstyle and elevator shoes). After ordering the kidnapping of a South Korean actress, Choe Eun Hee, in 1978 to help him start up a national film industry, the first thing the movie-mad Kim jokingly asked her at a welcoming dinner was: "Well, Madame, what do you think of my physique?" More painfully, he fears that in the eyes of his countrymen and allies, he can never match the achievements of his revered father, the "Great Leader" Kim Il Sung (who was close to six feet tall and who led a guerrilla army against the Japanese occupiers in the 1930s). By many accounts, the young Kim is fed up along with his top aides, who often reflect his views. "What I hear is, Big Brother is telling Little Brother, 'Don't do that'," the North Korean vice minister of Foreign Affairs, Kim Gye Gwan, complained when Beijing urged Kim Jong Il to cancel his planned missile tests in July. "But we are not boys. We are a nuclear power."