Great Leader Kim Jong-il

The following description of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il came from a 2003 article by Nicholas Kristof titled Stuck in a tunnel with Bush and the Great Leader.

"To be sure, Kim is not the crazy playboy he was said to be in the 1980s and 90s when intelligence reports on him were full of lurid stories of Swedish blondes and S and M videos. As better defector evidence emerges, it turns out that the Great Leader is actually a smart and self-confident sophisticate who surfs the Internet and watches CNN; any day now we may find that he's a fan of Wall Street Journal editorials.

"One of the assessments of Kim that rings most true to me comes from Cho Myung Chul, a defector who has known Kim since childhood. Cho describes the Great Leader as a fine pianist and table tennis player, smart and outgoing but, alas, also an aggressive risk-taker."