STARRING ELI WALLACH AS KIM JONG-IL:

North Korea's strange autocrat (John Thornhill and Andrew Ward, December 13 2002, Financial Times)

How do you deal with a regime, headed by the quixotic Kim Jong-il...? [...]

Aidan Foster-Carter, a Korea specialist at Leeds University, describes North Korea as "tactically astute but strategically dumb". In other words, it is capable of making rational choices within an irrational conceptual universe.

Mr Foster-Carter compares the North Koreans with "mountain bandits" who prey on others. "They come down from the hills and fleece people and demand payment to go away. But as Marxists would say, this is not a mode of production that is self-sustaining," he says.

Over the past few years, North Korea has used this strategy to squeeze fuel and food aid and economic concessions from its neighbours. It has provided almost nothing in return, apart from promising it will not behave even more badly in future. The hardline Bush administration in the US has tired of this particular game and is now refusing to engage Pyongyang until there is a visible and verifiable end to North Korea's nuclear programme.

First, we'd note another inappropriate comparison to the benign and noble, though confused, Don Quixote.
Posted by Orrin Judd at December 14, 2002 7:58 AM