Mystery Dictator With 22 Million in His Thrall

Kim Jong-il, North Korea's dictator and the man who ordered yesterday's underground nuclear test, remains a mystery both to his people and the outside world.

In his trademark Elvis-style jump suits, oversized spectacles and bouffant hair, Mr Kim is a much-lampooned figure. Since he succeeded his father, Kim Il-sung, North Korea's "Great Leader", in 1994, the "Dear Leader" has been ridiculed as an alcoholic, a womaniser with numerous illegitimate children, and an eccentric who is frightened of air travel and lurking assassins.

During celebrations last year to mark the 60th anniversary of the founding of the North Korean Workers Party, 63-year-old Mr Kim was engulfed in speculation that he would name his eldest son, Jong Nam, the child of a former film star mistress, as his successor. That would have cut out from the succession two sons from his official marriage to Koh Young Hee, a Japanese-Korean dancer.

Typically for life in the "hermit kingdom", Mr Kim kept his counsel. If he died tomorrow, no one seems to have a clear idea what would happen next.

But there is a darker side to Mr Kim. According to human rights groups and refugees, he presides over a political system built on imprisonment without trial, torture and slave labour in which hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, have died as a result of economic mismanagement and food shortages.

According to Human Rights Watch, prisoners suffer mistreatment and malnutrition, and torture appears to be "endemic". Its annual report said the regime was "among the world's most repressive".

For these and other reasons, it seems likely that if anyone is to suffer after the nuclear test, it will be the impoverished population. Brought up to revere the "military genius" of the "Great General", as Mr Kim is also known, the 22 million people will be told the test is another triumph in its 50-year resistance to the US.

The human cost of this siege mentality has been enormous. The military takes precedence in all allocations of food and fuel. During the most severe famine, ordinary people were told they must endure the "arduous march".

Recently the economy had been improving thanks to market reforms and greater trade with China and South Korea. Visitors to Pyongyang report more cars on the streets and more business activity.

But the unity and intensity of the international opprobrium heaped on Mr Kim for his actions may signal that another "arduous march" is in the offing.