That would be more reassuring if the regime had not repeatedly shown its determination to avoid coming across as a habitual bluffer, a paper tiger.

In separate incidents in 2010, after issuing dire threats of “revenge,” it did indeed sink the South Korean naval ship Cheonan and shell the South’s Yeonpyeong Island.

Although short of all-out war, both of those attacks — like others earlier such as the 1968 capture of the U.S. Navy spy ship Pueblo — were major and deadly provocations.

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If the Unha-3's short-lived flight, after which it exploded and landed in pieces in the Yellow Sea, was a humiliating preamble to celebrations to mark the centenary of Kim Il Sung's birth, the festivities in Pyongyang two days later were a sign that normal business had resumed.

Jong Un's portly figure and haircut have invited inevitable comparisons with his grandfather. But his first public speech since becoming leader four months ago could have been written for his father, Kim Jong Il, who died of a heart attack last December.

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Although his cramped accommodation in central Seoul is modest, it's still a world away from the life the 29-year-old led in North Korea until he fled in 2006 under cover of darkness.

Six months later, after a 6,000-mile journey that took him through China, Thailand, Laos and Taiwan, he completed the perilous trip that so many of his compatriots attempt, only to die en route or fall into the hands of unsympathetic Chinese authorities.

Yet more and more North Koreans are prepared to take such risks as they flee hunger and oppression in search of a new life in South Korea, where their newfound freedom is clouded by discrimination, mental health problems and financial hardship.

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That would be the newly installed supreme leader's elder half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, who has made some skeptical comments about the weakness of the bloodline that show an unusual insight into what’s going on in Pyongyang even though he’s a few thousand miles away.

The wires are abuzz with news of a soon-to-be-released book based on emails and interviews between Kim Jong Nam and a Japanese journalist Yoji Gomi over a seven year period. In the book, which is called “My father Kim Jong Il and Me,” Jong Nam reportedly said that North Korea is bound for collapse and called his half-brother, Kim Jong Un, a figurehead.

What “a joke to the outside world,” Jong Nam is purported to have said of the ascent of Jong Un, whom he admitted he has never actually met. More seriously, Jong Nam predicted, “The Kim Jong Un regime will not last long” and “without reform ... the regime will collapse."

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The character who takes the reader on this wrenching journey and gives the book its title, Jun Do, is not an orphan despite having grown up in an orphanage in the provincial town of Chongjin. His mother -- a beautiful singer who, like all beautiful women, we are told, got "shipped off to Pyongyang" -- is simply gone, leaving his father, the Orphan Master, a devastated and none-to-compassionate man. The orphans, like the beautiful women, are little more than a commodity (if a far less valuable one), and are sold off to work at hazardous factory jobs. The resourceful Jun Do survives this Dickensian situation and lands in the army. First, he learns to fight in the pitch-dark tunnels under the border with South Korea. Then he becomes part of a seagoing team of military kidnappers who specialize in abducting foreigners with desirable talents from beaches and piers.

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First there’s Korean culture. Koreans are noted for being emotionally demonstrative at such times. It’s the thing to do.

Take the case of South Korean President Park Chung Hee, who resisted intense popular pressure that he step down after 18 years as military-backed dictator. In 1979, his intelligence chief shot him to death.

Although Park had drastically overstayed his welcome with the South Korean people, he got a noisy, tearful sendoff. Along the route of his Seoul funeral procession women, especially, outdid themselves in screaming, wailing and shaking their fists at heaven.

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"What a wretched fate," Shin Sang-Ok, now 77, remembers thinking after the meeting with the pudgy man in the gray Mao jacket. "I hated communism, but I had to pretend to be devoted to it to escape from this barren republic. It was lunacy."

Shin is a film director of legendary stature in his native country -- the Orson Welles of South Korea. He modernized movies at a time when people hungered for art, for escape, following the Korean War. He and his wife, the well-known actress Choi Eun Hee, were among Seoul's celebrity set. But in 1978, he ran afoul of the frequently repressive government of Gen. Park Chung Hee, who closed his studio. After making at least 60 movies in 20 years, Shin's career appeared to be over.

What soon followed, according to Shin's memoir, "Kingdom of Kim," was an experience that revived his career in a most unbelievable way. Shin and his wife were both kidnapped by North Korea's despot-in-training, Kim Jong Il, who sought to create a film industry that would allow him to sway a world audience to the righteousness of the Korea Workers' Party. Shin would be his propagandist, Choi his star.

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Kim, whose official age was 69 but who actually was 70, died Saturday of a heart attack, according to North Korean state media.

He leaves behind a pretty much officially designated heir, his son Kim Jong Un, whose age is about 29. The young man has been given exalted titles including full general but has little experience compared with what his father had under his belt when Kim Jong Il’s own father and predecessor, Kim Il Sung, died in 1994.

The regime appears to have tried to position Kim Jong Un as a sort of reincarnation of Kim Il Sung, whom the young man greatly resembles physically. Barbers have given him the same haircut his grandfather sported when he took over the country in 1945 with Soviet sponsorship. There are rumors in South Korea that the young man has had plastic surgery to accentuate the resemblance. He wears the same “people’s clothing” — Mao suits — that his grandfather wore, not the zippered jumpsuits favored by Kim Jong Il.

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“Our comrade, Kim Jong Il, the General Secretary of the Korean Workers Party, the Chairman of the National Defense Commission and the commander of the Korean People’s Army has died,” read the news presenter, her voice quivering with grief.

“We make this announcement with great sorrow.”

It has been received, however, with great uncertainty.

Even experts on North Korea concede that intelligence from the secretive, authoritarian state amounts to rumor and guesswork. Following an announcement that Jong Il suffered a fatal heart attack in a train carriage, North Korea’s unpredictability is driving its enemies to brace for the worst.

Inside North Korea, where Kim Jong Il lorded over 24 million citizens like an emperor, the communist government has urged the public to remain strong despite their grief.

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The meeting was the first between envoys from the two nations since 2008, when international efforts to end Pyongyang's nuclear weapons program collapsed, and the announcement was certain to be welcomed in regional capitals and Washington.

But diplomats also have long experience with seeing the North engage in negotiations and seemingly making concessions before ultimately throwing up roadblocks that prevent real progress.

"We agreed to make efforts to resume the six-party talks soon," said Ri Yong Ho of North Korea as he was thronged by television crews and reporters. "The talks were conducted in a candid and sincere atmosphere."

His South Korean counterpart, Wi Sung-lac, agreed, describing the meeting as "very constructive" and "useful."

He said the two sides would continue to work together to create a conducive atmosphere for disarmament talks.

The two-hour dialogue occurred on the sidelines of Asia's largest security gathering.

Disarmament talks have been stalled since North Korea walked out to protest international criticism of a prohibited long-range rocket launch.

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No, seriously. America might have the market cornered on the privatized commercialization of terrible airbrushing jobs, and lord knows, the United States government has had a couple of gaffes when it came to image editing (we are bad at making private documents pixelated, it would seem), but we have nothing on some of these Asian countries when it comes to terrible photo doctoring.

Take China's case of "The Three Levitating Government Officials." On June 26, the Chinese government posted several photos with the caption: "County mayor Li Ningyi and vice-mayor Tang Xiaobing are inspecting the newly constructed country road at Lihong Town."

I don't know what they are putting in the drinking water in Lihong, but apparently it gives you the ability to levitate.

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The Times said the U.S. suspected the North Korean cargo vessel, the M/V Light, was carrying missile technology to Myanmar. The Navy destroyer McCampbell was sent to track its movement.

On May 26, the Times reported, the McCampbell caught up with the ship and asked to board it. The North Koreans refused, and since the U.S. did not want to force its way aboard, it could not confirm whether its suspicions were true.

Nonetheless, a few days after the Navy approached it, the North Korean vessel stopped well short of Myanmar and returned to its home port.

A White House official contacted Sunday by The Associated Press confirmed the substance of the Times story. The official, who was not authorized to discuss the incident, spoke on condition of anonymity.

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The envoy, Robert King, accompanied Eddie Jun on a flight from the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and told reporters after arriving in Beijing that Jun would be reunited with his family in the United States "within a day or two."

Jun did not appear with King before reporters in Beijing. Jun, dressed in a dark jacket, appeared in good spirits, smiling with King as they boarded the plane in Pyongyang, according to footage from Associated Press Television News. After Beijing, Jun flew to Seoul where he told reporters he would have a medical checkup, South Korea's Yonhap news agency reported.

Jun, a Korean-American from California who traveled to North Korea several times and had business interests there, was arrested in November, with the North's official Korean Central News Agency, or KCNA, saying he was accused of committing a serious crime. Pyongyang didn't provide details, but South Korean press reports say Jun was accused of spreading Christianity.

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The explanation for the cast transmogrification, according to reporters Ben Fritz and John Horn, comes down to simple dollars and cents. Hollywood can't afford to make the Chinese consumer angry.

...[P]otential distributors are nervous about becoming associated with the finished film, concerned that doing so would harm their ability to do business with the rising Asian superpower, one of the fastest-growing and potentially most lucrative markets for American movies, not to mention other U.S. products.

As a result, the filmmakers now are digitally erasing Chinese flags and military symbols from "Red Dawn," substituting dialogue and altering the film to depict much of the invading force as being from North Korea, an isolated country where American media companies have no dollars at stake.

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North Korea routinely issues similar threats against South Korea and the U.S. over any joint military drills. The latest warning, however, could rekindle tensions on the Korean peninsula which sharply rose last year after two deadly incidents blamed on the North.

North Korea fired artillery at a front-line South Korean island in November, killing four people. The barrage came eight months after the sinking of a South Korean warship which killed 46 sailors. North Korea has denied firing a torpedo at the ship.

North Korea called the planned South Korea-U.S. drills a "dangerous military scheme."

"The army and people of (North Korea) will return bolstered nuclear deterrent of our own style for the continued nuclear threat by the aggressors," North Korea's military said in a statement carried by the official Korean Central News Agency.

It accused South Korea and the U.S. of plotting to topple the North's communist government. It said if provoked, North Korea would start a "full-scale" war, take "merciless counteraction" and turn Seoul into a "sea of flames."

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In the past, Kim has marked his birthday by handing out luxury items and other goods meant to cement loyalty. This year, however, there were signs the country was skimping on the usual largesse and saving up for next year's 100th anniversary of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung's birth. The North is eager to make good on its promise to build a "powerful, prosperous" nation by 2012.

Instead, there was synchronized swimming and a dance party that looks, frankly, surreal. Other items on the weeklong schedule of fun include ice-skating, music shows, and exhibitions of Kimjongilia, a flower named after the leader.

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It's rare for North Korea to issue such a statement addressed to South Korea and it came as the U.S. envoy on the North was in the region to discuss the standoff.

Tensions between the two Koreas have been at their highest level in years since North Korea showered artillery on a South Korean-held island near their maritime border in late November, killing four South Koreans. The attack was the first on a civilian area since the 1950-53 Korean War, and occurred in waters not far from the spot where a torpedo sank a South Korean eight months early, killing 46 sailors. That attack was also blamed on the North.

Just days after South Korean President Lee Myung-bak vowed to boost his country's defenses but made clear the door was open for talks with Pyongyang, North Korean officials responded with their own call for negotiations.

"We are ready to meet anyone anytime and anywhere, letting bygones be bygones, if he or she is willing to go hands in hands with us," said a statement carried by the North's official Korean Central News Agency. It added that history has shown that such confrontation only lead to "armed clash and war."

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Although the North backed down from its threat to retaliate over South Korean drills Monday in west coast waters claimed by both countries, South Korean forces have been on high alert this week, warning of surprise attacks. The North responded to a Nov. 23 artillery drill on South Korea's front-line Yeonpyeong Island with an artillery bombardment that killed four, including two civilians.

The North has made some conciliatory gestures in recent days -- telling a visiting U.S. governor that it might allow international nuclear inspections of its atomic programs -- but Seoul appears unmoved and is bracing for possible aggression.

"We will completely punish the enemy if it provokes us again like the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island," Brig. Gen. Ju Eun-sik, chief of the army's 1st armored brigade, said.

South Korea's navy began annual four-day firing and anti-submarine exercises Wednesday off the country's less-tense east coast.

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Richardson made the statement Tuesday as he left New Mexico on his latest unofficial diplomatic mission.

Richardson is going to North Korea at the invitation of the Pyongyang regime. He returns Dec. 20.

The Democratic governor's private trip comes three weeks after North Korea shelled a South Korean island, killing four people.

The State Department says Richardson isn't delivering a message for the U.S. government.

This will be Richardson's third trip to North Korea since he became governor in 2003. Richardson's term ends this month.

Richardson served as U.N. ambassador in the Clinton administration.

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