July 17, 2006 issue - Is Kim Jong Il wacky? No American diplomat has talked to the North Korean dictator for years. But there have been moments when he's appeared quite sane, even sharp-witted. Six years ago the then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright stood next to the diminutive "Dear Leader"—he's about her height—at a stadium in Pyongyang. In front of them thousands of acrobats and dancers performed feats of synchronization that would have made Barnum and Bailey envious. As part of the show, which was intended to impress the visiting Albright with the glories of the North Korean "revolution," a mass of performers held colored placards that showed Kim's Taepodong I missile lifting off in a 1998 test.

"That was the first launch of that missile," Kim said, turning toward Albright. Then, alluding to a 1999 deal with Washington that placed a moratorium on missile tests, he added, "And it will be the last."

But it wasn't. Since then, Washington has refused to sit down with Kim one-on-one (the '99 missile pact was contingent on continuing negotiations). And on July 4, Kim fired off a total of seven test missiles in one night, in his own menacing fireworks display. Kim's show of defiance—even his sometime ally China had warned him not to launch—included a failed test of his new, and not so improved, Taepodong II. The prototype ICBM is supposedly capable of hitting Alaska or other parts of the western United States, but it splashed into the Sea of Japan some 40 seconds after liftoff. Still, North Korea's first nighttime missile test sent a shudder through Asia even as it provoked snickers in Washington, where intelligence officials dismissed the new Taepodong as a fairly primitive weapon.

At a news conference on Friday, President George W. Bush also played down the dangers posed by Kim's missile and nuclear-weapons program. The president has refused to negotiate directly with Pyongyang, unlike his predecessor, Bill Clinton, Albright's boss. Bush reiterated his six-year-old demand that Kim simply give up his weapons program. "I don't know what the man's intentions are," he said.

Some North Korea experts say that Kim has made his intentions fairly clear: he wants to survive. Since Bush hinted early in his first term that he wanted Kim gone, the North Korean leader has signaled wildly that he's too dangerous to be attacked. In February 2005 his regime volunteered that it had nuclear weapons. And with his tests last week, Kim showed that, even if he can't go intercontinental, he can hit South Korea and probably Japan—including U.S. troops stationed there—with warheads if he desires.

Bush has refused to take the bait. On Friday he insisted that Washington would engage in negotiations only alongside other countries, as part of the so-called Six Party Talks including China, South Korea, Japan and Russia. "My concern about handling this issue bilaterally is you run out of options very quickly," the president said. The problem is that Bush is running out of options now. The administration continues to defer to China, the lead negotiator, but it has seemed clear since a September 2005 pact to restart talks that Beijing will not pressure Pyongyang too hard with sanctions. Why? Mainly because the Chinese fear a collapse of the regime that could send millions of refugees streaming over the Sino-Korean border.

Washington, meanwhile, continues to tighten the noose around Kim. Late last year the administration announced it was investigating a Macau bank through which the North Korean leadership allegedly laundered money. The North Koreans angrily refused to come to the table after that, and the stalemate continues. "The president in his press conference said we have to deal with the world as it is," said Wendy Sherman, a former State Department official who accompanied Albright on the 2000 trip. "That's exactly the phrase we used: you have to deal with Kim Jong Il and the regime as it is. But Bush hasn't wanted to." Kim Jong Il, in response, seems to be speaking in the only language he's comfortable with these days—bombs and blastoffs.

With Mark Hosenball in Washington, Sarah Schafer in Beijing and Christian Caryl in Tokyo

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