The issue: Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s new leader, is a mystery to the world

In 1953, newspaper critic A.J. Liebling wrote a celebrated essay on the coverage of a long-running Soviet dictator’s death. True to the maxim that “big news demands big stories,” American newspapers ran yards of copy, almost all of it speculative, because they basically had only one fact to work with: “Stalin Dead.”

WE KNEW VERY LITTLE about the inner workings of the Kremlin or Soviet politics, an ignorance that persisted until the late 1980s, when, to the great surprise of Western intelligence agencies, the whole Soviet enterprise came crashing down.

Now we are confronted with another momentous change in a Stalinist regime: the sudden death of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, which revealed how little we know about that nuclear-armed, paranoid little state.

Dear Leader Kim died about 8:30 a.m. Saturday, Dec. 17. According to The New York Times, even the South Koreans, who presumably have the best sources north of the border, did not learn of the death until 48 hours later.

The U.S. State Department learned of the death, says The Times, from “press reporting” after the official North Korea media announced Kim’s passing 51 hours later. China, North Korea’s closest and perhaps only friend, learned of the death after similar lengthy delays.

NORTH KOREA IS monitored by spy satellites and spy planes and is surrounded by electronic eavesdropping posts. But this is a nation that denies its population any meaningful contact with the outside world and enforces that isolation through omnipresent secret police.

Critical information is shared only among a tightly disciplined inner circle. After Kim’s death, there was no telltale increase in phone traffic, no troop alerts, no rush by senior politicians to get back to the capital. Indeed, the titular president of North Korea made a previously scheduled visit to Japan to meet with the prime minister and celebrate his 70th birthday.

Even to the South Koreans who don’t face the language and cultural hurdles of Western spy agencies, Kim’s successor, Kim Jong Un, is a mystery. His age isn’t know for sure; he is either 27 or 28. It is known that he went to school in Switzerland for a couple of years in the mid-1990s.

Few North Koreans and even fewer Westerners had even seen a photo of him until his father began grooming him for the leadership 17 months ago.

SOME WRITERS have speculated that the young Kim may be more open to the West and reforms because of his brief exposure abroad; in addition to Switzerland, he recently did an introductory tour of China. But this semi-wishful thinking smacks of the 1982 ascension of Yuri Andropov to the Soviet Union’s leadership. Some overly optimistic commentators deemed him pro-West because he liked scotch and mystery novels.

The truth is, we don’t have a clue about the younger Kim or what he might do. “It’s scary how little we really know,” an Obama administration official told The Washington Post.

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