INSIDE THE MIND OF NORTH KOREA'S KIM JONG-IL
North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-il has provoked a dangerous international crisis, yet again. Our correspondent examines the weird and worrying mind of the Dear Leader
Aidan Foster-Carter
The Telegraph, May 30, 2010
In the state newspapers there is hysteria about "traitors". In Pyongyang's markets, prices have rocketed - especially for tinned meat, sugar, portable gas stoves and other goods needed to survive a war.
Last week Kim Jong-Il used an extraordinary cabinet meeting to order North Korean ministries to prepare for "all possible unforeseen circumstances, including the worst-case scenario", while the army's combat readiness was raised to the highest level.
His manner, according to well-informed sources in the capital, was "decisive and rough".
North Koreans have been prepared for battle many times before. But over the last few days the secretive communist state and its paranoid leader appear to have reached a new level of hysteria. There were daily civil defence drills, with citizens ordered not to use lights after dark, imprecations to take refuge in bomb shelters when sirens are sounded, and panic buying.
North Korea's dictator Kim Jong-il has provoked a dangerous international crisis, yet again. Our correspondent examines the weird and worrying mind of the Dear Leader
Aidan Foster-Carter
The Telegraph, May 30, 2010
In the state newspapers there is hysteria about "traitors". In Pyongyang's markets, prices have rocketed - especially for tinned meat, sugar, portable gas stoves and other goods needed to survive a war.
Last week Kim Jong-Il used an extraordinary cabinet meeting to order North Korean ministries to prepare for "all possible unforeseen circumstances, including the worst-case scenario", while the army's combat readiness was raised to the highest level.
His manner, according to well-informed sources in the capital, was "decisive and rough".
North Koreans have been prepared for battle many times before. But over the last few days the secretive communist state and its paranoid leader appear to have reached a new level of hysteria. There were daily civil defence drills, with citizens ordered not to use lights after dark, imprecations to take refuge in bomb shelters when sirens are sounded, and panic buying.
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