

How 'Crazy' Kim Jong Il Outfoxed the World - all
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/12/against-all-odds-how-crazy-kim-jong-il-outfoxed-the-world/250209/

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jxcole
Totally misses the point.

Kim jong il was good at being an evil dicator. But that doesn't make him any
less crazy. For example, once there was a German rabbit breeder who was able
to breed rabbits the size of dogs. KJI heard about it and decided they were
the answer to his countries hunger problems. The breeder tried in vane to
convince the leader that it was a terrible idea because the rabbits ate way to
much for this to be feasible.

Trying to use giant rabbits to solve a famine is insanity.

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brc
Overly generous. You might be good at holding onto power and convincing your
long-suffering people that they really have never had it better.

So he's good at holding other peaceful countries like Japan and South Korea to
ransom because they don't want to get into a fight. So far, so dictator, but I
don't really accept the hypothesis that this means he wasn't crazy.

Something I read in another report which I thought was hiliarious: "Official
accounts attributed his demise to mental and physical exhaustion while riding
on a train" - imagine how much exhaustion the Koreans pushing the train felt.

The guy was a nutcase, if measured on any normal scale. He was willing to let
his people starve in order to live like a medieval king. If he's so well
educated and read, then he knew what he was doing.

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bradleyland
Outfoxed? When one "outfoxes" another, there is a general implication of
success. Kim Jon Il did not achieve success. The rebuttal to this is that he
remained in power. However, to remain the captain of a ship that sinks to the
bottom of the sea under your guidance is not a success, but a failure.

