The Knucklehead of the Day award

Today's winner is Doctor No, I mean Kim Jong-Il. The North Korea dictator gets the award for launching missiles yesterday. All of which fell into the Sea of Japan shortly after takeoff.

What did this prove. That Kim is Doctor No? LOL, there are similarities as Eric Margolis notes. Did Kim topple his own missiles? We know he shares the same tailor with the James Bond villian. Kim is a reputed film buff, who knows maybe No is his hero.

All silliness aside, Kim Jong-Il is a sociopath. His pursuit of a missile program while his nation is starving is just further proof of how warped his mind is. Yesterday's actions will only make North Korea more of an outcast. The people of hermit kingdom will pay for this ill gotten venture. They deserve better than this.

Below is some analysis of Kim's behavior. Better yet, read this book if you'd like to understand this madman better. Kim Jong-IL is today's Knucklehead of the day.

Those blogging on Yesterday's test- Poliblog, Wizbang,
Open Post- Cao's Blog, Jo's Cafe, Basil's Blog, Bright & Early, Mudville Gazette,

SEOUL (AFP) - With his bouffant hair, platform heels and penchant for haute cuisine and Hollywood films, North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il is often ridiculed in the West.

But experts close to the Stalinist state say the reclusive figure with his finger apparently on the nuclear trigger is a shrewd and ruthless political operator who sees enhanced firepower as the key to his regime's survival.

"This is not a crazy or deluded man," Michael Breen, commentator and author on North Korea, told AFP. "He has shown how shrewd he can be."

Analysts around the world pondering reasons for North Korea's first ballistic missile test since 1998 have suggested everything from attention-seeking to an attempt to jolt the US back into direct talks.

Experts such as Breen, however, insist it is wrong to underestimate the tactical abilities of the 64-year-old or ascribe purely international motives.

Breen said the idea of Kim seeking attention was a "Washington-centred view" and instead speculates that the missile launch may have more to do with internal North Korean politics.

"There maybe an internal policy logic to this," he said.

Yet the view persists of Kim as a heavy-drinking playboy whose lifestyle extends to drinking the finest cognacs, compiling a 20,0000-strong movie collection and hand-picking virgins for his own private "Pleasure Squad".

While North Korea is commonly portrayed as the world's bad guy in Hollywood action movies, Kim himself comes in for comical treatment: he was ridiculed in the "Team America" animated feature made by the creators of cult US TV cartoon "South Park".

"The myth in the outside world is of this totally weird playboy. The real man is politically very shrewd. He has that North Korean skill of playing a weak hand well," said Breen, author of "Kim Jong-Il: North Korea's Dear Leader".

The perception of Kim at home is also skewed. Through propaganda he is worshipped by most North Koreans despite decades of hardship and a mid-90s famine that left up to three million people dead.

"He is a god-like figure to the people," said Yu Suk-Ryul, a North Korean expert in Seoul. "What he wants is what North Korea gets."

According to at least one defector, what the Dear Leader wants is a nuclear missile that can strike the United States, in the belief that the superpower would then no longer interfere with his regime.

Kim has defied international sanctions and condemnation to pursue nuclear warheads that could be loaded onto the long-range Taepodong-2 missile test fired Wednesday, which is capable of hitting Hawaii if successfully launched.

"I don't think he is prepared to give up his nuclear weapons," said Breen.

"That would require him to trust the United States and South Korea. We may have to live with a nuclear North Korea for a while."

The diminutive Kim, dubbed a "pygmy" by US President George W. Bush, grew up as the pampered first son of North Korea's founding father Kim Il-Sung.

North Korea's propaganda has transformed the two Kims into mythical figures with a vast personality cult.

When the son was born on February 16, 1942, a bright star and double rainbows appeared over his birthplace at Mount Paekdu, a sacred mountain, according to Pyongyang propaganda.

Independent experts say Kim was actually born in Russia at a guerrilla camp near Khabarovsk where his father was based while conducting warfare against Japanese forces who had colonised the Korean peninsula.

After graduating from Kim Il-Sung University in 1964, the 22-year-old Kim began his climb to the pinnacle of the ruling elite through the ranks of the Korean Worker's Party.

His role apparently included planning terrorist attacks including the 1983 bombing in Myanmar that killed 17 South Koreans and the 1987 bombing of a Korean Airlines jet that killed all 115 people on board.

According to a senior South Korea official, Kim pulled the strings during 1994 negotiations to resolve a nuclear crisis concerning a plutonium producing plant at Yongbyon, 90 kilometres (55 miles) north of Pyongyang.

For freezing that programme, he extracted a promise for the construction of two light-water nuclear reactors and, until the reactors were completed, annual shipments of 500,000 tonnes of fuel oil.

That project was officially scrapped earlier this year amid a renewed stand-off over its weapons programme.

Despite his pre-eminent role in North Korea, he waited three years after his father's death in 1994 before taking over leadership of the ruling Korean Workers' Party.

Cross Posted to Bullwinkle Blog