Waiting for the winds of change

Earlier this month, a news headline caught my eye: Kim Yong-il had stepped down! Finally, the winds of change had reached the distant shores of North Korea. Finally, its self-imposed isolation might end. Finally, there was a chance that the last relics of the Cold War would be swept away.

Only it turned out that the story was about Kim Yong-il, the premier, not Kim Jong-il, the "Dear Leader". A word to the wise: if you want to be taken seriously abroad, don't give all your leaders the same name. One Kim Jong-il, like one George Bush, is enough.

Anyway, after months of ill health, "Jong" is still in charge, and has been appearing in public again. Besides continuing to build nuclear weapons, he's recently allowed the detention and imprisonment of several American citizens (said to have entered the country illegally) and the sinking of a South Korean battleship (which North Korea denies).

Although he's a distant threat to the United States — his missiles, if they worked properly, could just about reach Alaska — Kim is a real threat to the 28,000 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea. Eight years after (the younger) Bush's "Axis of Evil" speech, America still considers him one of the world's main bogeymen.

Lest we forget, Friday, June 25 is the 60th anniversary of the start of the Korean War, in which 37,000 Americans and more than two million Koreans died. In South Korea, they call it the 6/25 war (after the date). In North Korea, it was the Fatherland Liberation War (led by Kim's father, Kim Il-sung). But no matter what it's called, the war hasn't ended. The fighting ended with an armistice, not a peace treaty.

World Cup parallels

Recent days have allowed us to spot parallels between North Korea's performance at the soccer World Cup and its performance in international politics. In both, the North has been playing a mostly defensive game. Its players spent almost all their time close together on their own side of the field. But there were random attacks as well. At unpredictable intervals, a lone player boldly rushed toward the opponent's goal posts. Collectively, it was as though the North Koreans didn't understand the game. They kept passing the ball sideways across the field instead of advancing toward a goal.

British bookmakers had given North Korea odds of 2,000 to 1 to win the championship. I'd say those are about the same odds of North Korea doing anything constructive.

Although... there has been a nod to private enterprise in the capital of this secretive monarchy. In 2008, Kim Jong-il revived his father's white elephant, a 105-story hotel whose unfinished hull has dominated the skyline of Pyongyang since 1987. At one point, construction of the building consumed two percent of the country's GDP. But instead of using local resources to finish it, Kim invited Egyptian company Orascom to do the job. Orascom will then be given an exclusive license to construct a 3G mobile-phone network.

What will North Korea be like when even a few of its people have smartphones? Kim Jong-il's strongest trait has been his unpredictability. The odds are still 2,000 to 1, given all the saber-rattling, but reform by any other name would smell as sweet.