Almost all of the conventional wisdom from American intelligence agencies about North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has been wrong, Peter Sanger of The New York Times reports.

When Kim became supreme leader two years ago, U.S. intel thought his China-allied uncle would guide his transition to power. In December, Kim had his uncle and some of his allies executed.

The U.S. thought Kim would focus on an economic overhaul of the meager economy instead of further development of military programs. Instead, Kim has chosen to continue testing ballistic missiles, working toward an intercontinental missile that could threaten the U.S., in addition to promoting the North's nuclear program, special operations forces, and long-range artillery.

As former State Department North Korea specialist Evans J. R. Revere told The Times: “We have failed. For two decades our policy has been to keep the North Koreans from developing nuclear weapons. It’s now clear there is no way they will give them up, no matter what sanctions we impose, no matter what we offer. So now what?”

Basically, the Hermit Kingdom has defied American expectations, and now the U.S. doesn't know what to do about it.

Further, American spies are in the dark. The Washington Post, citing the leaked "black budget" of the U.S. intelligence community, reported last year that "there are five 'critical' gaps in U.S. intelligence about Pyongyang’s nuclear and missile programs, and analysts know virtually nothing about the intentions of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un."

SEE ALSO: North Korean Defector Explains What It Was Like To Grow Up Thinking Kim Jong-il Was 'A God'

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un has chided his soldiers, telling them to be ready for "impending conflict with the United States," Pyongyang media reported on Saturday as satellites showed a nuclear test could be near.

The report comes as US President Barack Obama finishes up a two-day visit to South Korea, where he warned the North it faced tougher sanctions if the underground detonation went ahead.

It also comes after Pyongyang claimed it had been holding a young American for two weeks.

Kim, the supreme commander of the North's 1.2-million-strong armed forces often visits military units to deliver on-the-spot "guidance" on ways to strengthen preparedness.

He usually lavishes them with praise and presents gifts such as rifles or binoculars as symbols of their vigilance.

But after watching a shelling drill by an artillery sub-unit on Friday, he upbraided soldiers for their lax approach, the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said.

"Dear Supreme Commander Kim Jong-Un said nothing is more important than preparing for combat now, in the face of an impending conflict with the United States", KCNA reported.

North Korean state media regularly carries colorfully-phrased warnings that the isolated state is on the verge of war.

Pointing at a map, Kim ordered the unit to establish a firing position and start the shelling exercise, the agency said, without revealing the location.

"Watching the drill, he severely criticized the sub-unit for failing to make good combat preparation" citing the time it had taken to deploy, it said.

He blamed a lack of enthusiasm over training among the sub-unit's commander and his superiors.

"The minds of the commanding officers of this sub-unit and relevant unit seem to be away from the battlefield", he said, KCNA reported. It is unusual for the agency to carry direct quotes from Kim.

"Of course, they might do sideline jobs for improving service personnel's living conditions and do their bit in building a rich and powerful nation.

"However, they should always give priority to combat preparations", he said.

Speaking in Seoul on Friday after satellite imagery revealed the North was advancing preparations for a nuclear test, Obama warned it of sanctions with "more bite" unless it fell into line.

North Korea has conducted three nuclear tests, in 2006, 2009 and 2013.

Underlining its status as global outlaw, Pyongyang said late Friday that it had been holding US citizen Miller Matthew Todd, 24, since April 10 because of his "rash behavior" while passing through immigration.

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He’s early. It’s just after 10 a.m. at the Turnberry Isle Country Club in Aventura, Florida, and in walks Dennis Rodman—all six feet seven inches of him, wearing a tattered baseball cap emblazoned with “Cheetah Gentlemen’s Club,” a wrinkled cotton T-shirt, black nylon track pants and a pair of impossibly large boat shoes with laces tied in haphazard knots.

The oversized women’s sunglasses he wears will remain secured to his face for the duration of the interview.

Rodman, 52, is initially standoffish. “Let’s make this quick,” he says quietly. But once he starts talking, he opens up and over the next two hours delivers as promised, with a frank conversation about North Korea, the nation that has consumed his life for the past 15 months.

For the uninitiated, the story goes like this: As part of a documentary series they were creating, producers at the media company Vice gained access to the Communist country — which is off-limits to Americans — by catering to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s obsession with the Chicago Bulls. The producers reached out to Rodman, inviting him to North Korea for an exhibition basketball game alongside three members of the Harlem Globetrotters. Rodman agreed.

Rodman’s first trip to North Korea took place in February 2013. Since then, he says he’s visited six times. He calls Kim a “friend for life,” and as a result has been condemned by some in America as a traitor and a dupe.

But however you judge him, the provocative basketball player is now a potential source of information about a country that is inaccessible to most of the world. From the outside looking in, we see only Kim Jong-un’s appalling human-rights record and his country’s notorious famines, state executions and other abuses — but Rodman has a different perspective.

DuJour: Starting from the very beginning — can you talk about what it was like the first time you set foot in the country?

Dennis Rodman: It’s nothing like you’ve seen over here. Not even close. It’s funny, because when I first went there it was so…Communist. Dry and dreary and like, I don’t know. Everything is so dead. Like The Walking Dead. But the third time I went there, wow. [Pyongyang] changed a lot. New buildings were popping up and [Kim] is building all these new condos and hotels. He built the largest water park in the world, a ski resort and this big bowling alley. He’s doing everything for these people. You could go bowl for a quarter all day or go swimming all day for like 50 cents.

DJ: So in your view he’s “for the people,” yet he’s almost universally regarded as a hostile dictator. How do you reconcile that?

DR: He’s for the people. I wish they had somebody that could actually come back with me. You’ve got a five-foot-one president in a small country that scares the s--t out of people on this earth. And people here want to know, “Is he this tyrant? Does he kill people?” I’ve been around him and his compound, I’ve been to his vacation spots. If I would have seen something negative about him, I probably would have come back and said so.

DJ: I realize you’re not a foreign-policy expert, but when you’re visiting, don’t you think they’re only showing you the part that they want to show you?

DR: I know the media very well. It can work against you, it can work for you. And for me, I’ve been dealing with negative publicity all my damn life. But when it comes to politics, I never got involved in that s--t.

DJ: It’s hard to shock Dennis Rodman. But did that happen at any time in your trips?

DR: It was only one thing. When I walked into that stadium [for the first game], I sat down, and this little guy walks in. The Harlem Globetrotters were playing and I was sitting on the bench, and he sits right beside me. Seriously, I didn’t know who this f-ker was! People were sitting there kissing his hand and crying and giving their babies to him. I couldn’t believe these people — men and women sitting there crying for 25 minutes — and this kid’s like yay tall! They had this little chant and all the people were on their knees bowing down to this guy. That’s what shocked me right there. I’ve been around — I’ve seen a lot of leaders — but not like that. That’s how I actually met Kim.

The other thing I was really shocked at was when I went to see the grandfather and the father in the mausoleum. It’s about five times bigger than Aventura Mall. The whole thing, I swear to God, it’s five miles in diameter. You cannot run, you cannot walk, you have to get in this escalator. The grandfather is in the middle of the room with all his pictures and stuff, and he’s frozen. That’s a true story! You can’t never bow in front of his head, you have to go around him and bow. I’m like, “Damn! This s--t looks real!” They said yeah, he’s frozen forever. The father’s frozen, same thing. Each room is that big and the room after that is for [Kim]. That’s what tripped me out. 150,000 people go in a day. They have to wear black suits. You see them crying the whole time. That’s what trips me out about the country. They all cry.

DJ: How would you describe Kim Jong-un’s personality?

DR: When he’s around his people, he’s just like anybody else. He jokes and loves playing basketball, table tennis, pool. They love American ’80s music. They do karaoke to it. He has this 13-piece girls band with violins. He gets a mic and they play the whole time. He loves The Doors and Jimi Hendrix. Oldies. When I first went, the live band only played two songs for four hours: the theme songs from Rocky and Dallas.

DJ: Is he image conscious?

DR: His wife is. They’ve been married two years. She don’t dress like a typical [North] Korean. She likes Gucci, Versace. She dressed really cool. And Kim dressed pretty much in black, gray, brown. He made me two suits. They come right there and make a suit for you in two hours.

DJ: What have your interactions been like with his family?

DR: I’ve been around his whole family; I’ve held his baby. No one’s ever held his baby before but me. I got pictures of me holding his infant. I gave [his daughter] a little Rodman jersey, we took pictures of it. Me, him and her and his wife. I have a lot of pictures of that in my safe-deposit box.

DJ: How did the second exhibition game, on his birthday, come about?

DR: He was making fun of the Harlem Globetrotters, saying he didn’t want a circus the next time. We were on this big-ass yacht — it’s like a Lady Moura, a 400-foot yacht, like a cruise ship. And we were having dinner and I said, “I should throw a basketball game here. Just me and I’ll bring a lot of athletes. When is your birthday?” And he said January 8, so I said, “Let’s do it on your birthday.” And he jumped up in the air, started clapping and telling everybody, “Oh my God! He’s throwing a basketball game for me!”

DJ: So you put a group together of seven retired NBA players and brought them over. Afterward, some of the players say they were misled about the trip. They thought they were going to play for charity. Is that true?

DR: Bulls--t. Bulls--t, bulls--t, bulls--t. They knew.

DJ: And they got paid…

DR: Who paid ‘em? I paid ‘em! I paid them before they went over there.

DJ: Roughly how much?

DR: $30,000 to $35,000 each.

DJ: So you said, “It’s Kim Jong-un’s birthday, I’ll give you $35,000 for three days, do you want to come?” And they all said yes?

DR: Yeah. They didn’t realize we had a camera rolling 24-7 [for a BBC-produced documentary]. [Filming] them saying, “Oh, I love North Korea!”

DJ: Do you get any money from the North Korean government? An appearance fee?

DR: No, there’s no money. I do it for free.

DJ: Has Kim Jong-un discussed anything political with you?

DR: I’ve never told this to anyone, but the last time I was there, they just came out and started saying stuff about what they want from Americans. How they want to rewrite the peace treaty, they want us to get the ships out of South Korea. He’s saying the reason why they have the nuclear bombs is because they know that Americans think they can take over. He says, “I don’t want to bomb anyone. But we keep our nuclear weapons because we’re such a small country — that’s the only way we can defend ourselves.” They just want people in America and the government to know they don’t hate Americans. They want to work with Americans. They just want them to abide by the agreement that they wrote up years ago.

DJ: So up until that point you had never talked politics?

DR: No, it was more casual, just joking and laughing. But when I heard that [political discussion] me and my friend were like, Oh my God, now it’s getting serious. That’s the first time I ever heard that. That takes it to a whole different level.

DJ: And how did you respond?

DR: He said, “Well, we just want to try to straighten this out and try to open the doors with Americans.” I thought that I was going to get engaged in trying to negotiate some type of deal with the Americans. And after all of that, we came back for a dinner, and the first thing he said was, “Don’t worry about it. That’s OK. Don’t do that. We don’t want you to get involved.”

DJ: You’ve said in the past that Kim Jong-un wants President Obama to call him. Can you elaborate on that?

DR: He really, really wants to talk to Obama. He can’t say it enough. He wants to talk to him to try to open that door a little bit. He’s saying that he doesn’t want to bomb anybody. He said, “I don’t want to kill Americans.” He loves Americans.

DJ: Have you ever seen anything alarming in your time there?

DR: It’s just like any other country, you go to Russia, Germany, you’re gonna see soldiers all over the place. You see soldiers that carry guns and sit at the airports. It’s just like that.

DJ: But the difference is that in North Korea there are hundreds of thousands of people suffering and starving in labor camps.

DR: You name any country in the world… Which country does not have that s--t? Every country has that.

DJ: When you hear that people are dying of malnourishment and being overworked — have you been in the fields, have you seen that?

DR: I’ve seen it. They work for peanuts. But like I said, he’s not like his grandfather or father. He’s not like that. He’s actually trying to change it. He’s actually doing cool things for these people, and that’s why they love him so much.

DJ: And the accusations about him having his family members killed…

DR: You could say anything here about North Korea and people would believe it. The last time I went there, when they said they killed his girlfriend, they killed his uncle, they just fed him to the dogs… They were standing right behind me.

DJ: You’re saying that the uncle that the North Korean government itself confirms was executed is actually alive?

DR: He was standing right there.

DJ: Are you ever concerned about your safety when you’re over there?

DR: I love my country. I love my country to death. And there’s no other place in the world I’d rather live. But if I go to North Korea — the next time I go to North Korea — the fear for me of not coming back… It won’t be because of North Korea. So I’m just letting you know right now… [long pause] That’s the real truth. Read between the lines on that one.

DJ: So you think the American government would have a problem with you coming back into the country?

DR: When I go there, it’s going to be a problem coming back. Because they could actually stop me from coming back. They could actually pull my passport. They already told me that. They’re afraid of me because I know so much.

DJ:“They” being…?

DR: Americans. Our government. They’ve got to be careful what they say, what they do, so I respect that. But for me, I mean, it’s freedom of speech. I’m not hurting anybody, I’m not putting anybody in danger, I’m just telling what I see. I have that leverage now that no one in the world has.

DJ: Is it true you’re being indicted by the U.S. Treasury?

DR: They want to indict me. And I’m like, “For what?” Treason. They’ve threatened me. They said I gave his wife a fur coat, a dress, I gave all these gifts. I was like, “I did? No I didn’t!”

DJ: Have you ever asked the U.S. government for support?

DR: I said six months ago [to the government], “Why don’t you guys help me?” They didn’t even give me a f–king response, so I was like, f–k it. I just wish people would actually take advantage of the situation that I have, instead of ridiculing me about everything I do. It’s so unfair. It’s very hard to try to do something like that in North Korea by yourself when the government don’t want to help you.

DJ: Why do you think that is?

DR: If Magic Johnson went over there, it would have been a whole different story. He would have had so many people helping him to do some good stuff for the world. But I did this all by myself. I want to go back and take a couple people with me so they could actually see it and say, “Hey, you know what? It’s actually true what he’s been saying.”

DJ: Who do you have in mind?

DR: I asked Oprah to go with me next time. I’ve asked quite a few people. Donald Trump wanted to go. He wanted to give me his plane to go over there. Then all of sudden he started to get all weird and s--t.

DJ: Does this make you more interested in politics or less?

DR: People put me in a category as this diplomat, this ambassador, which I don’t want to be. This is a sports thing. In 10 to 15 years, this is going to be historical. Watch. Because I went there for sports. No one’s ever done that! It’s using sports to open the doors for communication around the world. Going through sports, not through politics. So that people can see North Korea in a great light. That little kid is changing North Korea for the better, and once we see that, maybe he’ll just loosen up and start opening the door for the people of the world. That’s it.

(This interview has been condensed and edited for clarity. )

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Since Kim Jong-un succeeded his father, Kim Jong-il, in 2011, the 31-year-old has been trying to make his mark as Supreme Leader of North Korea.

However, a recent interview with a North Korean defector from Kim Jong-il’s inner circle indicates that Kim Jong-un is nothing more than a symbolic head, and that the real power belongs to a mysterious organization called the Organization and Guidance Department (OGD).

Even weirder?

Its director was none other than Jang Sung-taek, the uncle whom Kim Jong-un executed in December. The execution has, apparently, cut all familial ties between the organization and the country’s supreme leader.

In the interview, North Korean defector Jang Jin-sung explains that the OGD is like “an old boys’ network” made up of Kim Jong-il’s university friends.

Kim Jong-il rose up the ranks with the men who run the organization, and these very men, most of which the world has never seen, are still running the show. 

“When Kim Jung-il died and Kim Jong-un succeeded him, people saw the transfer of power from father to son,” Jang Jin-sung told CNN. “What they did not see also was what happened to the apparatus of the totalitarian system that supported the rule of Kim Jung-il.”

That apparatus is essentially the OGD, a body of the government that Kim Jong-un may not have close ties with the way his father did. And now that his uncle is out of the picture, there is nothing that ties him to the institution. Jang Jin-sung assesses that the current situation means that Kim Jong-un has no real power as Supreme Leader of North Korea. 

“Kim Jung Il had the OGD as his old boys’ network,” Jang said. “Kim Jong-un may have friends in his Swiss school, but he has no one inside North Korea.

So who are the OGD and what do they do?

• The OGD is considered the most important department of the Korean Workers Party Central Committee.

• It was formed in 1946 as part of the Department for General Matters of the KWP.

• It focuses on four main areas: affairs related to the KWP headquarter, matters related to the North Korean army, administrative matters, and party matters.

• The military desk was formed by Kim Jong-il in the 1980s as the North Korean military grew.

• Kim Jong-il succeeded his uncle Kim Yong-ju as department director in 1974, but never officially left his post, so it was succeeded by the first deputy director after his death.

• The first deputy director was Kim Jong-un’s uncle Jang Sung-taek, who led the organization until his execution in December.

• It is currently led by Jang Sung-taek’s wife, Kim Kyong-hui, though several reports have speculated that she may be either dead or in a vegetative state.

• The OGD expanded so much in power and influence under Kim Jong-il that party bureaucrats refer to it as the “party within the party.

• Only the very elite those proven to be the most loyal to the regime are permitted to work in the OGD.

• The OGD’s current first vice directors are Cho Yon-jun, Min Byong-chol, and Kim Kyong-ok. Most pundits are not familiar with them, but they are the link between Kim Jong-un and second and third tier leadership. In other words, they are the power behind the throne.

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As spin-doctoring goes, Jang Jin Sung had one of the world’s hardest jobs.

His mandate: breathing beauty into the affairs of a ruthless despot. He was the personal poet laureate to Kim Jong Il, who ruled North Korea until his death in 2011.

Mr. Jang lived large as a member of North Korea’s inner circle. But the job was risky.

He defected in 2004, after a minor slip-up left him threatened with execution. He spent a year on the run in China before finding safety in South Korea.

These days he is an outspoken critic of the North Korean regime and of the international community’s efforts to contain the rogue state. He has authored a collection of poetry — this verse about a mother selling her daughter is among his most celebrated. His memoir “Dear Leader” has just been released.

GlobalPost met him in a Thai restaurant in London.

He was calm and polite, and seemed like he could handle a crisis. He ordered whiskey on the rocks and stroked his smartphone as an interpreter translated his words into English. The interview has been edited and condensed.

GlobalPost: Jang Jin Sung is not your real name — why did you change it?

Jang Jin Sung: My work is critical of the of the North Korean regime so I have to be anonymous to protect my family.

What was it like to meet Kim Jong Il?

I was not allowed to look above his second shirt button, I had to rub my hands with sanitizing gel before shaking his hand and I couldn’t move without permission.

Are the North Koreans poetry fans? What kind of stuff do they like?

Learning poetry is part of the culture but you are forced to do it and the only topic is about how wonderful the leader is. The idea of liking it or not is redundant.

I know you are a fan of Lord Byron. How did you access his work?

In North Korea there is something called “The 100 Copy Collection” where classic works are available to elite families so they can understand something of the outside world. There are only 100 copies of each book — hence the name.

My family had a copy of Lord Byron’s works and they inspired me to be a writer.

How did you feel about having the themes of your poetry dictated to you?

It was incredibly frustrating. Writing became like a job. The best assignment was to write about the past because then I had the freedom to insult some other king or country whereas everything else had to be in praise to the leader.

What made you start writing poetry that criticized the regime?

I needed to write the truth to keep myself sane. It was driving me crazy to keep denying reality and it was a relief to write what I wanted even if no one would ever read it.

After I finished my first free poem I wept with happiness. I was ecstatic that I was able to write something that wasn’t ordered from above.

What made you leave?

Writers are employed by the Psychological Warfare and Counter Intelligence Department and as part of my job I had access to outside literature.

I lent a South Korean magazine to a friend and he left it on a Pyongyang subway train. To leave a South Korean magazine in public is unbelievable blasphemy and they would have executed me and sent my family to a prison camp.

So I had to run away. I haven’t heard from my family since.

You have said that the only hope for change in North Korea is from the nascent market economy — do you really hold no hope for dialogue?

No, because the only people you can have a dialogue with are the people who want to maintain the status quo. Why would they change anything? They would lose their wealth and position. Dialogue would only work if you pressure them on human rights issues, for example.

How would a human rights-based dialogue be more effective then?

Security-based talks are not effective because you can’t make North Korea get rid of their nuclear weapons. If you pressure them on human rights then they might compromise on real things like control and the prison camps.

Security issues are just a back-and-forth that makes little difference to the people on the ground.

Would North Korea ever deploy their nuclear weapons?

The regime’s last card is not nuclear war, their last card is to open up and reform because then the leadership can escape with their lives.

This is not an ideological regime; this is a pragmatic money-based regime. Why would the leadership commit suicide by starting a nuclear war when they could go into exile with loads of money?

What effect does freedom and democracy have on the human spirit?

The human spirit doesn’t exist in North Korea because a free democracy is a prerequisite for its existence.

What are your plans for the future?

I want to do all I can to speak on behalf on the North Korean people and give them their voice back.

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A North Korean singer said to be Kim Jong-Un’s ex-girlfriend and reported to have been executed by firing squad last year has appeared on state television, apparently alive and well.

Hyon Song-Wol was shown on state television delivering a speech at a national art workers rally in Pyongyang on Friday.

The singer was reported to have been caught up in palace intrigue last summer having incurred the displeasure of Ri Sol-ju, Mr Kim’s wife.

The 31-year-old North Korean leader and the performer were said to have been teenage lovers but had been forced to break up their relationship by Kim Jong-il, the deceased Dear Leader.

Then in August, Chosun Ilbo, a South Korean newspaper with close links to that country’s intelligence services, reported that Hyon and eleven other well-known performers had been caught making a sex tape and executed.

But on television this week, Hyon expressed gratitude for Mr Kim’s leadership and pledged to work harder to “stoke up the flame for art and creative work”.

The reappearance of Hyon - perhaps best known for her hit song Excellent Horse-like Lady - came after months of speculation about whether or not she was alive.

“They were executed with machine guns while the key members of the Unhasu Orchestra, Wangjaesan Light Band and Moranbong Band as well as the families of the victims looked on,” sources reportedly said at the time.

South Korea’s spy chief Nam Jae-Joon added weight to the reports when he said in October that he was “aware” of the alleged execution.

“We are aware of the execution of some 10 people associated with the Unhasu Orchestra”, two lawmakers quoted Mr Nam as saying at a closed door parliamentary session, according to Yonhap news agency.

It was also reported that other bands that were part of the “new wave” of music ushered in by Mr Kim’s succession to the leadership had before forced to witness the execution as a salutory lesson.

Asahi Shimbun, Japan’s best selling daily, joined in the reporting, claiming the rare execution of state performers had been ordered to prevent rumours spreading about the supposedly decadent lifestyle of Ms Ri, North Korea’s first lady, while she was an entertainer.

North Korea angrily denied the reports, calling them an “unpardonable” crime.

The North’s state news agency KCNA said the reports were the work of “psychopaths” and “confrontation maniacs” in the South Korean government and media.

“This is an unpardonable, hideous provocation hurting the dignity of the supreme leadership,” a KCNA commentary said.

In an apparent attempt to prove the rumours untrue, North Korean radio in October aired a performance by the Unhasu orchestra but the lack of pictures of the singer until last week reports of her death had continued to dog the Pyongyang regime.

Edited by Hannah Strange

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James Franco and Seth Rogen are joining forces again for another comedy which may leave Kim Jong-Un unhappy.

Sony Pictures just released the first teaser trailer for "The Interview," in which the two run a celebrity tabloid show. 

The pair get recruited by the CIA to assassinate Jong-Un after they land an interview with the North Korean dictator who just so happens to be a fan of their show.

Franco and Rogen have built quite a reputation for their comedies lately after the success of the duo's "This is the End" (which made $126 million) and Rogen's "Neighbors" ($225 million).

"The Interview" is in theaters this October.

Watch the trailer below.

SEE ALSO: Seth Rogen's secret to success: Make it cheap, dirty, and ignore the studio

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The admirals of the Soviet Union declared North Korea’s prize submarine to be obsolete back in 1961, and Western experts stubbornly point out its inability to sink enemy vessels.

But Kim Jong-un, the “Supreme Leader” of North Korea, offered navigation tips and issued stern battle orders during a proud tour of a Romeo class submarine of the People’s Navy.

Designed in the 1950s, the vessel was in production for the Soviet Union for only 48 months until being succeeded by nuclear-powered submarines 53 years ago.

Every other navy in the world then gave up on the Romeo, with its noisy and easily detectable diesel engine – apart, that is, from North Korea’s.Today, the country has 20 Romeo class boats, comprising almost a third of its submarine fleet.

During his visit, pictures of which were released on Monday, Mr Kim mounted the vessel’s conning tower and went on a short voyage, during which the official news agency reported that the multi-talented leader “taught” the submarine’s captain a “good method of navigation”.

Mr Kim also urged his commanders to think “only” of “battles” and “spur combat preparations”.

Any captain of a Romeo class submarine might, however, view hostilities with trepidation.

The boats carry Yu-4 torpedoes, a Chinese-made weapon dating from the 1960s with a range of four miles.

The Los Angeles Class nuclear-powered attack submarines of the US Navy, meanwhile, carry Harpoon missiles that can sink a ship 150 miles away.

The North Korean vessel is a “basic” model with “virtually no anti-submarine performance”, says IHS Jane’s Fighting Ships.

This means the Romeo might try damaging a ship – provided it happens to be less than four miles away – but it would be helpless against an enemy submarine trying to send it to the bottom.

At least one North Korean submarine has gone to the bottom without any help from the country’s enemies.

A Romeo class boat sank in an apparent accident in 1985.

Of North Korea’s 20 submarines in this category, seven were supplied by China between 1973 and 1975 and the rest built in the country’s own shipyards between 1976 and 1995.

More than three decades after the Soviet Union had stopped making the vessel – and after it had been phased out by the navies of Syria, Algeria and China – North Korea was still producing its own version of the Romeo.

Mr Kim’s decision to pay a high profile visit seems at odds with the official doctrine of the so-called People’s Navy, which stresses the importance of camouflage and concealment.

So seriously were these tasks taken that 2004 was officially declared the “Year of Camouflage”.

On the 10th anniversary of that occasion, however, Mr Kim allowed photographs of the unlikely pride of his fleet to be released to the world.

Cdre Stephen Saunders, the editor of IHS Jane’s Fighting Ships, summed up: “The fact that the Dear Successor is spending time on what, in any other navy, would be an obsolete submarine tells its own story.”

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Don't expect to see James Franco and Seth Rogen joining Dennis Rodman on any North Korean vacations in the near future.

The well-known pals have been condemned by the regime for their upcoming movie "The Interview" which pokes fun at the Dear Leader.

"There is a special irony in this storyline as it shows the desperation of the U.S. government and American society," a spokesman for Kim Jong Un told The Guardian. "A film about the assassination of a foreign leader mirrors what the US has done in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Ukraine. And let us not forget who killed [President John F] Kennedy – Americans."

The regime is understandably upset, as the movie sees Rogen and Franco playing celebrity journalists who are recruited by the U.S. government to assassinate Korean dictator Kim Jong Un.

The pair is also briefed on the propaganda coming from the regime, which includes the claim that Kim Jong-Un never defecates or urinates, and he can speak to dolphins. 

It's not hard to imagine that the Hermit Kingdom might not find the idea of assassinating their leader funny, but an official response to an American comedy might be sillier than the movie.

Apparently Kim Jong Un plans on watching #TheInterview. I hope he likes it!! http://t.co/5VrsgYlydE

— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) June 20, 2014

The movie hits theaters in October. In the meantime, you can watch the teaser trailer below:

Read the whole exchange in its entirety here >

SEE ALSO: Seth Rogen's Secret To Success: Make It Cheap, Dirty, And Ignore The Studio

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North Korea fired two short-range ballistic missiles into seas east off its coast on Sunday, South Korea's Joint Chiefs of Staff said, in a breach of U.N. resolutions against the use of ballistic missile technology by the isolated country.

The launch came days before Chinese President Xi Jinping's scheduled state visit to South Korea. China is the main benefactor of the North, which is also under sanctions for conducting nuclear tests.

The missiles, which appeared to be Scud class, were launched from an area on the east coast of the peninsula and flew about 500 km (310 miles) before crashing harmlessly into the water, an official for the Joint Chiefs of Staff said.

The test firings on Sunday came three days after the North launched three short-range projectiles into the waters off its east coast, which flew about 190 km (120 miles) and landed in the sea.

Such launches are routine. North Korea frequently test-fires short range multi-rocket launchers, which are not prohibited under U.N. sanctions on the isolated country.

North Korea's possession and testing of ballistic missiles such as Soviet-era Scuds, however, breach the sanctions, and are seen to contribute to Pyongyang's long-range missile programme.

North Korea has so far conducted test firing of its ballistic missiles and rockets 11 times this year, including four involving ballistic missiles.

The isolated country usually test-fires its short-range rockets and ballistic missiles amid annual U.S.-South Korean military exercises as a form of protest, observers say.

Pyongyang routinely denounces the joint military exercises as preparation for war.

Sunday's launch came less than a week before Xi's July 3-4 visit to South Korea. Xi and South Korea's Park Geun-hye are expected to discuss North Korea's nuclear programme in a summit meeting next Thursday.

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During the glory days of the Cold War, the Kremlin was scared shitless by Levi’s, McDonald’s, and other symbols of decadent Western culture. That is no longer the case.

This past October, visitors to Lenin's tomb in Moscow were turned away because the leader of the Bolshevik Revolution wasn’t receiving visitors. Why not? A Coca-Cola–sponsored stage set up to promote the Sochi Olympics was blocking the entrance to his tomb.

In North Korea, however, the regime still considers foreign-made consumer products potentially dangerous. But it’s not blue jeans and Big Macs Kim Jong-un is currently worried about. No, he's trying to keep out the sinister influence of the somewhat tasty South Korean Choco Pie.

Seoul-based Orion Confectionery began producing the Choco Pie in 1974 — a pretty blatant ripoff of the Tennessee-born Moon Pie. Thirty years later, during a period of wary cooperation between the North and South, South Korean businesses began running factories in Kaesong, a 25-square-mile special administrative zone just across the border in North Korea. Today, 125 South Korean companies employ 52,000 North Korean workers there. The North Korean regime is paid about $100 a month for each employee, each one of whom is then given roughly $67 of that.

But Pyongyang forbids South Korean factory managers at Kaesong from paying bonuses or cash incentives to North Korean workers. And so they began rewarding them with Choco Pies.

Curtis Melvin, a researcher at the US-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, says that while Choco Pies are “not nearly as good” as the Moon Pie, they're essentially used as currency by North Koreans much like prison inmates might use cigarettes. North Koreans reportedly value Choco Pies at anywhere from 80 cents to $10 — a lot of money in the DPRK — and some Kaesong workers were getting up to 20 Choco Pies per shift.

The North Korean regime was not okay with this. And so state security forces initially attempted to wage a propaganda campaign against Choco Pies, saying “If the products from the ‘neighborhood downstairs’ are enjoyed unconditionally, the ideology of the people could wither at any moment.” And now, according to South Korean news reports, Pyongyang has outright banned the pies from Kaesong. Workers can be rewarded with sausages, instant noodles, coffee, and chocolate bars — but not Choco Pies.

North Korean meth, motorcycle gangs, Army snipers, and a guy named Rambo. Read more here.

One Western businessman who regularly travels to the DPRK and just returned from 10 days in-country — he requested anonymity to avoid any backlash from the North Korean regime — tells VICE News that he didn’t see a single Choco Pie in Kaesong. “Orion Choco Pie wrappers used to be common trash up on Jangsu Hill in Kaesong,” he says. “This time I didn't see them.”

Though it might seem counterintuitive in the “Hermit Kingdom,” there is, in fact, a fairly high level of awareness there of foreign brands. Christopher Graper, a guide with North Korea specialists Koryo Tours who also curates a huge collection of historical North Korean images and artifacts for his RetroDPRK project, says it’s “very easy to find foreign brands all the way back to the '60s and '70s, even in propaganda images.”

Graper explains that these would have all been “likely gifted from overseas Koreans, or donated in some sort of butter trade with other socialist countries." He also points out that Kim Jong-il’s black Mercedes was immortalized as a backdrop in Pyongyang’s annual Mass Games, held at the Rungnado May Day Stadium every autumn.

North Korea fires ballistic missiles off eastern coast. Read more here.

As serious as Kim clearly is about the capitalist influence of mediocre baked goods, those working to disarm the regime tell VICE News they can’t be bothered.

"I don’t comment on Choco Pies,” says Tony Namkung, a high-level negotiator who has accompanied Governor Bill Richardson, President Jimmy Carter, and Google’s Eric Schmidt to North Korea. “We’re trying to prevent a nuclear arms race in the region.”

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SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un limped on to the stage on the anniversary of his grandfather's death, footage broadcast by state media on Tuesday showed in a rare display of weakness in a country where leaders are portrayed as semi-divine.

The footage showed Kim limping quickly on to the center of a large stage in front a vast smiling portrait of his grandfather, North Korean founding president Kim Il Sung, who died 20 years ago.

State media and propaganda are highly choreographed by the isolated country and any defects with its leadership are usually kept a tightly guarded secret.

Kim Il Sung, who ruled until his death in 1994, had a large and inoperable tennis-ball sized growth on the back of his neck which meant state media were forbidden from filming him from certain angles.

It was not immediately clear how Kim Jong Un developed the limp. State media has shown the 30 year-old leader conducting extensive military on the spot guidance visits on the east and west coasts in recent weeks.

North and South Korea are technically still at war after their 1950-53 civil conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty.

North Korea, which has threatened a fourth nuclear test in violation of U.N. sanctions, has test-fired short-range missiles and rockets three times in the past 10 days and threatened to continue doing so.

(Additional reporting by Sanggyu Lim; Editing by Nick Macfie)

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North Korea's polarizing leader, Kim Jong-Un, is at the heart of Seth Rogen and James Franco's new movie, "The Interview," and that's not sitting well at all with the controversial country.

Now North Korea is going so far as to send a letter to U.N. Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon demanding that the movie be banned, according to Reuters.

The letter is dated June 27, but Reuters just got their hands on it.

They say the letter accuses the U.S. of sponsoring terrorism and committing an act of war.

The premise of "The Interview" revolves around an American TV-host and his producer getting an interview with Kim Jong-Un. That's when the CIA recruits them to kill the polarizing North Korean dictator. 

The letter to the U.N. came from North Korea's U.N. Ambassador, Ja Song Nam, who wrote, according to Reuters, "To allow the production and distribution of such a film on the assassination of an incumbent head of a sovereign state should be regarded as the most undisguised sponsoring of terrorism as well as an act of war."

On June 25, when the story first came out, Rogen took to Twitter to address the dispute:

People don't usually wanna kill me for one of my movies until after they've paid 12 bucks for it. Hiyooooo!!!

— Seth Rogen (@Sethrogen) June 25, 2014

SEE ALSO: Ireland Is Having A Meltdown, And It's All Because Of Garth Brooks

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Everyone's heard about North Korea, the hermit kingdom that hangs off the east coast of China.

Condoleezza Rice called it an "outpost of tyranny." George W. Bush said it was one-third of the "axis of evil." And now James Franco and Seth Rogen are releasing a comedy about it, much to Pyongyang's disapproval.

Despite all of that, we really don't know that much about North Korea. But what we do know is rather mindblowing.

If North Korea's capital were a US city, it would be the 4th-most populous.

The population of Pyongyang is 2.843 million.

The fourth-most populous U.S. city is Houston, Texas. Its population is 2.195 million.

Source: CIA

North Korea has a 100% literacy rate.

The CIA defines literacy as "age 15 and over can read and write."

According to that definition, the literacy rate is 100%.

Source: CIA

There are 28 state-approved haircuts.

According to Time, "Women are allowed to choose one of 14 styles; married women are instructed to keep their tresses short, while the single ladies are allowed let loose with longer, curlier locks."

Men are "prohibited from growing their hair longer than 5 cm — less than 2 inches — while older men can get away with up to 7 cm (3 inches)."

Source: Time

SEE ALSO: Kim Jong-Un Seen Limping Across Stage

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It really feels like a hornet's nest is being kicked with the upcoming The Interview. The Christmas Day comedy has already sparked talk of being an "act of war" on the part of America against Korea, and now we're getting pretty nervous re-writes. It looks like directors Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg's vision is not making it onto the screen intact. 

The Hollywood Reporter has revealed that Sony is considering several digital alterations to the material that will soften the blow. One is the alteration of various buttons worn by the North Korean characters in the film, which apparently are accurate representations of buttons worn by certain military officials in North Korea, a detail that the trade says would be "considered blasphemous to the nuclear-armed nation." But another planned change stems from the third act, which is why we'll be moving into spoiler territory here. 

Apparently, The Interview includes the heartwarming sight of Kim Jong Un's face melting off. Unless that's a fantasy sequence (or even if), that's a pretty harsh way to go. The guy's already pissed at the general idea of the movie. Is he really going to be won over by a scene where he watches an impersonator pretend to be a faceless version of him? The moment is apparently in slow motion, which likely means its graphic nature is played for laughs. Which is pretty morbid, when you think about it. Rogen and Goldberg are reportedly batting around the idea of cutting it because they're not sure that it's funny. Here's the thing: it's super morbid. And that's probably what makes it funny. What's funnier? People taking their relatives on Christmas Day to see a movie where someone's face melts off in horrifyingly unfunny slow motion. If you thought the harsh responses to Wolf Of Wall Street were bad, oh, man, your grandma is never going to talk to you again. 

Kim Jong Un is actually something of a film buff, so hopefully he sees value in this depiction. His father also was a movie fan, and while most are uncertain about his feelings regarding dying horribly in Team America: World Police, his lack of outrage suggests he was at least mildly amused. Rogen, who previously directed This Is The End with Goldberg, doesn't seem to feel the heat, responding frequently on Twitter that he hopes Kim Jong Un enjoys the movie. Hopefully, that's the case. Antagonizing a rogue nation in this manner could be dangerous, and spokesmen have allegedly commented on the possibility of President Barack Obama blocking the film from release. The hope is that it's no big deal, but it really does feel like a whole lot of trouble for a funny movie, right? 

SEE ALSO: North Korea Hates Seth Rogen's New Movie

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North Korea’s nuclear program seems to be fundamentally non-negotiable for Pyongyang. Former South Korean national security advisory Chun Yung-woo is convinced that the North Korean regime would prefer to collapse with its nuclear weapons than to try and survive without them.

The South Korean military estimates that North Korea has fired over 110 projectiles since January 2014 — including eight Scud missiles and seven ultra-precision high-performance tactical rockets, to name a few.

North Korea justifies its production of nuclear weapons because of the US's posture in the region. During his recent speech to the UN General Assembly last week, North Korean foreign minister Ri Su Yong said, “The hostile policy, nuclear threat, and stifling strategy pursued by the United States for more than half a century inevitably resulted in the decision of nuclear weapons state of the DPRK (sic).”

To add fuel to the fire, this summer a propaganda video of North Korea launching a cruise missile identical to Russia’s Kh-35 was released. North Koreans likely bought the missile from Russia, in violation of UN sanctions against North Korea, or from a third party.

It seems as though the era of cruise missile ubiquity is upon us.

With North Korea’s well-oiled propaganda machine, recent uptick in missile launches, and its new acquisition of the Kh-35 cruise missile, it is time to revisit our passive political strategy toward the not-so-hermit country.

North Korea’s nuclear arsenal is dangerous — but its small, albeit certainly bigger than Iran’s currently non-existent arsenal. A move away from strategic patience and towards strategic engagement would better advance US national security interests as well as bring the world that much closer to pulling back the tide of nuclear proliferation.  

As nuclear expert Jeffery Lewis said in a recent article, “North Korea is an egregious violator of human rights armed with nuclear weapons — but since we are not willing to use force to fix that little inconvenience, we have to talk to them.”

Sarah Tully is a research intern at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. She has her master's degree in Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asian Security Studies from the University of St. Andrews in Scotland.

SEE ALSO: North Korea claims it's making alarming progress towards building a usable nuclear weapon

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No one seems to know what's happening in North Korea right now. Kim Jong Un hasn't been seen in public in weeks. The capital is reportedly on lockdown. And Pyongyang sent perhaps its most senior delegation in history to South Korea, pretty much by surprise.

Maybe Kim Jong-Un, the country's hereditary neo-Stalinist ruler, was overthrown in a palace coup. Maybe he's just recovering from ankle surgery. No one outside the country really knows for sure — at least no one who's in a position to talk about it publicly. 

And if an earlier, far more severe and more public North Korean upheaval is any guide, the world may never know.

In 1995, one or even two entire army corps might have been plotting an insurrection at the moment the Kim regime was at its weakest. The fact that so little is known about the incident 20 years later is an instructive reminder of how Pyongyang excels at perpetuating its own survival — and suppressing the truth in the process.

What Actually Happened In 1995?

In 1995, North Korea was experiencing one of the most severe crises in its history. The end of Cold War-era subsidies from the Soviet Union led to the collapse of the north's once-powerful manufacturing sector; meanwhile Pyongyang feared that liberalizing the economy in the face of an economic depression and growing food shortages would weaken a regime committed to hardcore centralization. As a result the Kim dynasty survived the famine years — while creating a catastrophe that killed around one million people between 1994 and 1998.

People were dying, infrastructure was collapsing, food was scarce, and experts were widely predicting the Pyongyang regime couldn't survive without the Cold War-era power balance to sustain it. Regime founder Kim Il Sung had died also in 1994, meaning one of the government's pillars of legitimacy was gone — replaced with Kim Jong-Il, the late dictator's son and someone who appeared vulnerable and untested to many outside observers.

In the spring of 1995, North Korea's Sixth Army Corps, which regional expert Michael Madden describes as "one of the military's nine major regular army units," was purged and disbanded. The corps, which was based in the northeastern coastal city of Chongjin, was violently cleansed of its top leadership after an army unit commanded by Kim Jong-Il's brother-in-law deployed to the area. Per Madden,  

Scores of commanders and officers were reportedly executed. Some accounts claim a firing squad brandishing machine guns mowed them down. Other accounts say the officers were tied up and restrained in their headquarters, which was burned down.

Few dispute that a major army unit was liquidated during perhaps the most desperate point in the regime's recent history. The question is why.

Madden admits that "the details remain unclear" but concludes that the corps "abandoned their posts and might have mobilized with the intention of marching on the capital." 

Scholars Victor Cha and Nicholas Anderson described a fairly developed plot to split the military and undermine the Kim regime: "In 1995, upset with Pyongyang's decision not to ship food to the Hamgyong Provinces, senior officers of the VI Corps stationed in Chongjin sought to take control of a university, a communications center, Chongjin port and missile installations and reportedly planned to team up with VII Corps ... to oppose the government," they write in an essay included in the book North Korea in Transition.

Barbara Demick, the Los Angeles Times' current Beijing bureau chief and author of the critically lauded book "Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea," isn't so sure. In an 2009 interview with The New Yorker, she said it's unlikely an attempted coup was underway in 1995, basing her conclusion on extensive work with North Korean defectors from Chongjin whose narratives formed the core of her book:

I know many North Koreans who lived in Chongjin at the time; they heard rumors of a coup attempt. I don’t think it’s true. The more plausible story is that Kim Jong Il thought they were taking too big a cut of the lucrative trading at the Chinese border. (The North Korean military runs trading companies that sell everything from pine mushrooms to amphetamines.) During the famine many soldiers died of starvation themselves. But nobody has ever confirmed a story that they rebelled en masse.

The Kim Regime's Chilling Resilience

In a moment of acute national crisis a surprisingly large portion of the North Korean military was involved in insubordinate activities deemed threatening enough to justify a rapid purge.

It's still unknown whether these activities were economic — the circumvention of North Korea's command economy during a deep famine — or political, or some combination of the two. The fact is that a seemingly pivotal event which by one account might have involved the potential defection of a full 2/9ths of North Korea's major regular army corps is only vaguely understood almost 20 years later.

This helps explain the folly of  looking for an inflection point in North Korea's latest mysteries.

North Korea is an opaque and remarkably stable autocracy with no recent confirmed history of serious coup attempts or civil conflict. It's had two peaceful leadership transitions in recent decades even if they were from within the regime itself. Even the few organized challenges to the system's resiliency might not have been what they seem to be. Pyongyang has not only weathered severe crises, but succeeded in almost totally hiding them from the world's view in the process.

The Kim regime may well fall apart one day. But if the 1995 incident and the persisting uncertainty over its nature and origins is any indication, it'll likely happen in public, rapid, and dramatic fashion — in a way that won't require weeks or even decades of outside guesswork.

SEE ALSO: One explanation for Kim Jong-Un's disappearance, and the surprise North Korean delegation to the South

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SEOUL (Reuters) - North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been out of sight for over a month and if he does not appear at a key political event early on Friday, speculation will intensify over his health and grip on power in the secretive country.

North Korea's state media, which usually chronicles the 31-year-old's whereabouts in great detail, has not made any mention of Kim's activities since he appeared at a concert with his wife on Sept. 3.

Friday is the 69th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's Workers' Party, an event Kim has marked in the past two years with a post-midnight visit to the Pyongyang mausoleum where the bodies of his father and grandfather are interred.

"Should he fail to appear, it will fuel speculation that the young North Korean leader has fallen on hard times of one kind or another," said Curtis Melvin, a researcher at the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.

"The longer he remains out of the public eye, the more uncertainty about him, and the status of his regime, will grow."

Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, often appeared in state media at party events or factory visits on the Oct. 10 anniversary, newspaper archives show.

North Korean officials have denied that Kim's public absence since early September is health-related and a U.S. official following North Korea said this week there were no indications he was seriously ill or in political trouble.

Speculation that Kim's unusually long absence from public view may be due to ill health was fueled by a North Korean TV report late last month that he was suffering from "discomfort".

Some Pyongyang-watchers also suggest that Kim may have been sidelined in a power struggle, a scenario they say was reinforced by the unexpected visit on Saturday of a high-level delegation to the closing ceremony of the Asian Games in Incheon, South Korea. Another interpretation of that visit holds that it was meant to convey stability in Pyongyang.

"It would have to be a very subtle coup indeed not to disrupt international travel plans," said Andray Abrahamian of the Choson Exchange, a Singapore-based NGO currently running a program for North Koreans in Southeast Asia.

This is not the first time Kim Jong Un has been missing from public view. In June 2012, six months after coming to power, state media failed to report on or photograph him for 23 days. He re-surfaced the next month at a dolphinarium.

Kim, who has rapidly gained weight since coming to power after his father died of a heart attack in 2011, had been seen walking with a limp since an event with key officials in July.

He was absent from a Sept. 25 meeting of the Supreme People's Assembly, or parliament, the first he has not attended since coming to power three years ago.

However, Kim's name has not disappeared from state propaganda.

Thursday's edition of the Workers' Party newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, carried three letters to Kim from overseas allies on its front page, and has reported on returning athletes from the Asian Games who thanked "the Marshal" for his support during the competition.

Abrahamian said he believes Kim's absence has been due to health reasons, and not that he's been usurped.

"Kim Jong Un has always shared power with other key figures and even if the internal balance of power has shifted, it is unlikely that they would want to remove him, given his unmatchable symbolic value. Again, though, everyone is guessing," he said.

(Editing by Raju Gopalakrishnan)

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A lot of stranger-than-usual things have been going on in North Korea lately. Kim Jong-Un hasn't been seen in public for weeks, a period when the country sent a surprise delegation to South Korea — perhaps the most senior-level mission the Hermit Kingdom has ever dispatched to its estranged neighbor.

Speculation that something's up is bound to spike if Kim fails to appear at a celebration of North Korea's 69th anniversary on Oct. 10. Already, observers are wondering if a behind-the-scenes coup is in motion, or if one of the world's most opaque and oppressive governments is heading for its long-awaited, long-predicted collapse.

Here are some of the top reasons why that probably isn't what's happening.

There is no proof of a coup in North Korea right now. None. A lot of coup speculation has been based around a statement from prominent North Korean defector Jiang Jing-Sung that Kim is no longer in control of the country. But Jiang defected all the way back in 2004, and nobody else has corroborated his claims.

It doesn't make sense for North Korea to send a huge delegation south during a palace shakeup. One of the number-one rules of a coup is that those who are revolting have to remain in the capital in order to declare victory and consolidate power. (For example, here's Amadou Sanogo of Mali broadcasting his victory during the junior-officer's successful and hugely disastrous March 2012 coup.)

There's an inverse to that rule as well. The losers often have flee for their lives, or seek some kind of pragmatic accommodation with the country's new leaders, something that members of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood learned the hard way after Egypt's military coup in the summer of 2013.

Kim was last seen in public on Sept. 3. The delegation went south on Oct. 4. It doesn't make sense for that many high-ranking officials to leave the country in the midst of a leadership crisis, unless it were an incredibly brief and invisible one.

And if such a crisis were ongoing, they would have communicated this fact to their southern counterparts. Bringing us to ...

China and South Korea aren't behaving as if a coup is going on. A coup in North Korea would be a terrifying security crisis for Seoul. It would replace the relative predictability of the Kim dynasty (aside from the very occasional shelling or nuclear test) with a new and therefore unknowable status quo — this involving a country with 690,000 active frontline personnel and the world's largest artillery force.

If a shakeup were ongoing, there would at least be the visible residue of southern alarm: military redeployments or mobilizations, perhaps, or high-level meetings with American military commanders, or even an increase in the US's regional military presence. None of this has happened yet, that we know of.

A North Korean coup is also a nightmare scenario for China, since even the potential collapse of authority in North Korea would create a wave of migrants at the Chinese border.

Keeping North Koreans out of China is a top priority for Beijing in its relationship with Pyongyang. There would be a military buildup along the Chinese-North Korean border if Bejing believed that something were happening right now. But no such buildup has taken place.

North Korea doesn't exhibit any of the risk factors for coups. Political scientist Jay Ulfelder has developed a system for determining the coup risk for a given country in a given year. Using decades' worth of data, Ulfelder has isolated the factors that put a country at risk for a coup — and North Korea exhibits almost none of them.

Countries with armed insurgencies, a history of recent coup activity, civil resistance campaigns, and a relatively brief span of time since the last "abrupt change in polity" are at a heightened coup risk, as are countries that fall in the middle range of a 21-point "degree of democracy" scale. North Korea has no armed insurgency, no confirmed recent coup activity, no public and organized civil resistance, six decades of a single regime, and perhaps the world's greatest degree of internal oppression.

North Korea's government is incredibly cruel, but it is also more stable than outsiders have often led themselves to believe. 

None of this means that there isn't a coup going on. But there's a strong case for skepticism — and little more than suspicion and circumstantial evidence to counter it. As of right now, there's more support for an alternative and perhaps less-exciting hypothesis: that Kim is simply recovering from a leg injury.

SEE ALSO: Why the utterly bizarre situation in North Korea will remain a total mystery

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