While some people enjoy collecting model trains and building tiny stations along scaled down tracks, North Korean leader Kim Jong-il appears to have taken this passion to a new level. According to a report in South Korea’s largest daily newspaper, the Chosun Ilbo, Kim has six private trains and 20 stations around the country built just for him.

Kim’s train is armored and also contains conference rooms, an audience chamber and bedrooms. Satellite phone connections and flat screen TVs have been installed so that the North Korean leader can be briefed and issue orders, the paper said quoting intelligence sources.

Security obsessed Kim has 90 carriages in his collection and uses three trains when he travels, according to the paper. The advance train carries security personnel who check the tracks and look for bombs along the way. The train in the middle carries Kim and his entourage, while the trailing train is also for security.

Lee Yong-guk, who served in the closest circle of bodyguards for Kim in the 1980s before defecting to the South, told Reuters that North Korean security had mastered the art of camouflage to such a level that a train going north may in fact mean a ship carrying Kim is heading south.

Kim also travels the rails with a few young women who share food, drinks and perhaps a few other things with the man known at home as the “Dear Leader”, Lee said.

The reclusive Kim is thought to be afraid of flying and typically uses his private rail cars for his few trips abroad. He also likes to ride the rails for his internal inspection visits to military bases, factories and farms called “field guidance” by the North’s state media.

U.S. and South Korean aerial reconnaissance of North Korea have been keeping track of Kim’s trains for years, causing him to send out decoys.

There was speculation that Kim may have been the target of an assassination attempt in 2004 when there was a massive explosion in the area where his train was thought to have been travelling.

Kim could soon be taking one of his rare trips aboard. His state media reported in late October that Chinese President Hu Jintao had invited Kim for a visit. If Kim does take the journey to China, which would be his first since a trip there in January 2006, the North will probably be true to its form and not announce the visit until it is over and Kim is safely back in Pyongyang.

(PHOTO: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il visits the newly built Kumjinggang Guchang Juvenile power plant in North Korea during one of his field guidance visits in an undated photo provided by the North’s KCNA news agency on Nov. 8, 2009)

Once a year, North Korea’s often vitriolic rhetoric machine fires up with special intensity to attack those who attack its human rights record. The exchanges usually come toward the end of the year when the U.N. General Assembly approves what has become an annual measure criticising North Korea for having one of the worst rights records in the world.

Reclusive North Korea is a member of only a few international organisations so the annual rebuke at the United Nations stings particularly hard for the state that bills itself as a workers’ paradise, or as it said in a state media report on Tuesday: “the best socialist state in the world as it is centred on the popular masses”.

North Korea comes under special scrutiny this year because it will be subject to official international questioning of its human rights record at the United Nations in December, which could provide even more embarrassment for the North’s thinned-skinned leaders as the prickly state is put on the defensive.
North Korea has prepared for this event by changing its Constitution earlier this year and adding clauses about human rights protections.

But many of the rights of North Korean citizens spelled out in the document are not carried out. For example, it guarantees freedom of assembly, but Pyongyang can send to political prison anyone who gathers without permission of authorities. The regime guarantees freedom of religion, but jails those who try to exercise the right. Privacy is a right, but the government’s large internal spy network keeps tabs on almost all citizens.

According to human rights groups, the United States and other leading democracies, North Korea maintains a vast political prison system to stamp out dissent. It intimidates the masses through public executions and by guilt by association where it can jail family members of those it accuses of crimes.

North Korea’s official media usually unleashes some of its harshest rhetoric during this human rights season, saying this is all part of a plot by a hostile United States to topple its leaders. Already this week, the North slammed “the ceaseless mean ‘human rights rackets’ kicked up by the U.S. and its followers.”

“This is nothing but a despicable plot to attain their sinister purposes by putting political pressure upon the DPRK (North Korea),” its KCNA news agency said.

The points to watch this year when North Korea is raked over the coals for its record are whether Pyongyang will use the criticism as a means to back away from international nuclear disarmament talks – as it has done previously – or if it will finally grant the request of Vitit Muntarbhorn, the U.N. special rapporteur for human rights in North Korea, to see for himself what is going on in one of the world’s most isolated states.

For years Mohamed ElBaradei, Nobel Peace Prize laureate and outgoing head of the U.N. International Atomic Energy Agency, has warned the United States and other Western powers against jumping to conclusions about Iran’s nuclear program. While Washington, Israel and their allies see increasing indications that Tehran’s secretive nuclear program is aimed at developing weapons, ElBaradei told an audience of academics, politicians and diplomats at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York City that his agency has “no concrete evidence” that Tehran is pursuing an atom bomb.

So is Iran’s nuclear program intended solely for lighting light bulbs in the world’s fourth biggest oil producer as Tehran insists? According to ElBaradei, its purpose is something completely different.

“Iran’s nuclear program is a means to an end, it wants to be recognized as a regional power,” the outspoken Egyptian lawyer and diplomat said. “They believe that the nuclear know-how brings prestige, brings power, and they would like to see the U.S. engaging them. Unfortunately that holds some truth. Iran has been taken seriously since they have developed their program.”

In other words: Don’t mess with us. We can enrich uranium.

U.N. officials who know ElBaradei have told Reuters for years that the IAEA director-general is convinced that Iran is pursuing what is often called the “break-out option” — the capability to produce nuclear weapons should it ever decide it needed them. He is not convinced, they say, that Iran has taken a decision to follow North Korea’s example and build an actual weapon.

But Western diplomats who follow the Iranian issue say that it is doubtful Iran would choose to hover on the threshold of the nuclear club without entering the door. A more likely scenario, they argue, is that the Islamic Republic would secure its place at the table of world powers by developing and possibly even testing a nuclear device. They also say the impact on the Middle East would be the same whether Iran has the “break-out option” in the drawer or a live bomb in its basement. In either case the result would be a nuclear weapons race across the already unstable Middle East.

ElBaradei has spent six of his 12 years at the helm of the IAEA neogotiating with Iran to get access to Iran’s nuclear facilities, many of which were hidden from U.N. inspectors for decades before their existence was revealed by Iranian exiles or Western intelligence agencies.

The IAEA chief chastised the administration of former U.S. President George W. Bush and the European Union’s three biggest powers — Britain, France and Germany — for failing to seize what he said was an opportunity they had years ago to persuade the Iranians to suspend their uranium enrichment program.

“They were ready to stop at an R&D (research and development) level … that could have not have created any concern for the international community,” he said.

Making matters worse, the European and U.S. demands that Iran cease all enrichment activity before negotiations on a package of economic and political incentives could begin was among the conditions imposed on Tehran that ElBaradei described as “impossible to accept.”

Western diplomats, however, have said that it would be naive to think that the Iranians were ever truly prepared to suspend their enrichment program after the EU trio launched negotiations with Tehran in the fall of 2003. They have defied three rounds of U.N. sanctions for refusing to stop enriching.  Bush’s successor Barack Obama has reversed the U.S. position by offering to engage Iran’s leaders, but they have reacted coolly so far.

ElBaradei, who opposed the Bush administration’s decision to invade Iraq in March 2003, said Bush’s refusal to negotiate directly with North Korea and Iran was a colossal policy failure that had created “a total mess.” (North Korea tested nuclear devices in 2006 and 2009.)

ElBaradei added that if Israel, which neither confirms nor denies having a sizable nuclear arsenal of its own, follows through on threats to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities it would backfire. He said Tehran would simply launch a “crash course” to get an atom bomb and “would turn the Middle East into a ball of fire.”

One of the primary aims of North Korea’s propaganda machine is to show its founder Kim Il-sung and current leader Kim Jong-il as all-knowing, parent-like (and at times god-like) figures who devote themselves entirely to bettering the lives of every citizen of the state.

Kim Il-sung, known as the “Great Leader” is also the eternal president of the state formed at the start of the Cold War. His son Kim Jong-il, who took over when his father died in 1994, is known as the “Dear Leader.”

The reality of course is quite different. While the Kim family basks in riches, North Koreans are some of the poorest people in North Asia, who are threatened with famine due to a lack of food in a state that several have criticised for having one of the world’s worst human rights records.

North Korea’s state media from time to time runs stories about events that had taken place several years ago, even decades sometimes, to reinforce the message that its leaders have shown great concern for all the people.

Here is a story that came out this week about a visit state founder Kim Il-sung made to a cabbage patch nearly three decades ago.

    Pyongyang, October 12 (KCNA) — President Kim Il-sung gave field
guidance to the Oryu Co-op Farm, Sadong District, Pyongyang one day in June
Juche 63 (1974).
    He went to a cabbage field where the cabbage grew well.
    He stepped into the field regardless of muddy ground with a bright smile on his face. Suddenly he stooped himself to see a head of cabbage carefully. Those accompanying him turned their doubtful eyes to the cabbage.
    Its leaves had only fine luster.
     After a while the President asked a farm official whether the cabbage had been hit by hailstones.
     At that moment the official was very surprised.
     Actually the cabbages had suffered a slight damage from hail when young.
    However, the cabbages were unusually in good condition so that it was difficult to find the marks of damage.
     The President found out instantly the marks that even the peasants and experts could hardly do.
     The officials were deeply moved by his extraordinary observation.

(Photo: North Koreans offer flowers to a statue of state founder Kim Il-sung to commemorate the 61st anniversary of the founding of the state, in Pyongyang September 9, 2009, in this picture released by North Korea’s official news agency KCNA.)

North Korea knows how to put on a show for honoured guests. Visiting Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao was this week treated to a special performance of the "Arirang" mass games, the world's biggest choreographed extravaganza with as many as 100,000 participants.

Part circus act, part rhythmic gymnastics, the display features dancing girls, goose-stepping soldiers and a massive flip-card section animated by ranks of performers, which this time included one-off Chinese messages added for Wen.

But in the time honoured tradition of opaque Communist regimes, the slogans were likely meant as more than just a simple part of celebrations, and certainly suggested that the isolated regime keeps a very close eye on political developments in the northern neighbour that is one of its few allies.

In almost flawless Chinese they spelt out a giant welcome message that acknowledged their visitor's populist reputation in China: "Grandpa Wen, so happy to see you!" -- which may have been as heartfelt as it was enormous, given there is hardly a steady stream of top international leaders beating a path to the door of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il. 

This was matched with a string of more formal tributes to President Hu Jintao, whose official place in the pantheon of China's top communist leaders (along with national icons Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping) was cemented at massive national day celebrations in Beijing on Oct 1.

"Build a harmonious socialist society," might not sound like a rousing paean, but in fact it is one of Hu's key slogans, part of a campaign to make the country's growth more equal after decades of frenzied development. There was also a stodgy but politically impeccable homage to Hu's role as general secretary of the Communist Party of China, and a nod to one of his other key rallying calls, for a "people-centred concept of scientific development."

When he touched down in Pyongyang earlier this week, Wen became the first Chinese premier to visit North Korea since 1991, according to Beijing, and he arrived at a time when the secretive regime, shunned internationally for its nuclear weapons programme, is struggling economically in the face of a recent round of tighter sanctions.

China is vital as a key supplier of aid, a conduit for dialogue with less friendly nations, and in the past a defence against Western calls for tighter punishment of Pyongyang for its nuclear ambitions -- though Beijing did sign up to tougher UN controls, after North Korea's second nuclear test in May.

The North Korean government signalled during Wen's visit that it could return to nuclear disarmament talks it had declared dead six months ago, but a report that it was near restoring its atomic plant underlined the secretive state would keep stakes high.

With so much in play, and China's role key to the eventual outcome, the North Koreans must be hoping Wen's team took plenty of snaps of their giant tribute to show off back in Beijing.

[Photographs of Wen Jiabao and Kim Jong-il and the Arirang mass games]

There are no McDonald’s, Starbucks or KFC joints in reclusive North Korea, but there is the Samthaesong Soft Drink Restaurant, which is the North’s take on fast food complete with waffles on the menu. The communist state, which has its “juche” ideal of self-reliance as a guiding principal, said the restaurant offers the finest fast food in the land made from home-grown ingredients.

Even though the restaurant will serve the masses in Pyongyang, most North Koreans outside the capital struggle to find enough to eat in a country that battles chronic food shortages.

Here is the report on the new restaurant from the North’s KCNA news agency in an article it issued on Friday:

The Samthaesong Soft Drink Restaurant located in Moranbong District, Pyongyang is crowded with Korean and foreign customers.
    It serves more than 20 kinds of dishes including burgers, waffles, French fries and crispy fried chicken along with soft drinks.
     It was opened at the beginning of June last. Most of the tables are arranged by the semicircle windowed wall so that the customers can take food, looking out the street through windows.
     It instantly cooks and serves dishes to the customers as they demand.
 Manager Ko Jong Ok told KCNA that the restaurant will make world-famous foods with local raw materials to the taste of the Korean people.

{Picture: North Korea’s Samthaesong Soft Drink Restaurant in Pyongyang shown in an undated photo released by North Korea’s official KCNA news agency August 28, 2009.)

Kim Jong-il may be at the forefront of a fashion trend that has just hit the streets of Pyongyang: Using oversized umbrellas as parasols.

The North Korean leader started travelling this year with a soldier whose job is to carry a large black umbrella to protect him from the sun.

Kim, called the “Dear Leader” by his state’s official media, has been trailed by his umbrella bearer on many occasions since he returned to the public scene earlier this year after suffering a suspected stroke a year ago.

The iconic traffic ladies of Pyongyang have been swept up in the trend inspired by Kim.

Visitors to the North Korean capital have a hard time forgetting the young women who stand at major intersections in uniforms and direct the few cars on the road with gestures that seem inspired by military drill sergeants and professional boxers. Pyongyang does not have traffic lights. One of the few state secrets that residents of the North Korean capital will share with foreign visitors is that these women are often selected for their looks.

It appears Kim, who is also greatly concerned about their access to make-up, was behind the umbrella proliferation:
“The traffic controllers are moved by the warm affection shown for them by General Secretary Kim Jong-il who saw to it that the platforms with umbrellas are being set up this time after raincoats, rain boots, sunglasses, gloves and cosmetics as well as seasonal uniforms were provided to them,” the North’s official KCNA news agency said on Thursday.

(PIcture at top: North Korean leader Kim Jong-il visits the Yeonsa district revolution battlefield at an undisclosed place in North Korea, in an undated photo released by North Korea’s official KCNA news agency May 24, 2009. The photo of the traffic policewoman was released on August 13, 2009.)

It turns out that it was North Korea which had suggested that former President Bill Clinton would be the best person to come and negotiate the release of two journalists who had been sentenced to 12 years of hard labor in the Stalinist state.
 
The U.S. government -- particularly Secretary of State Hillary Clinton -- had been working for months on trying to free the two journalists. The secretary of state reportedly proposed sending various people to Pyongyang, including Clinton's former vice president Al Gore, to lobby for the women's release.
 
But North Korea rejected Gore and other possible envoys like Senator John Kerry, Governor Bill Richardson and former ambassador to South Korea Donald Gregg. Pyongyang wanted President Clinton and passed that word along through the two detained journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who were making occasional phone calls to their families.
 
"In mid-July during one such phone call, Ms. Ling and Ms. Lee shared what the North Koreans had told them -- that they would be willing to grant them amnesty and release the two Americans if an envoy in the person of President Clinton would agree to come to Pyongyang and seek their release," a senior administration official said.

The families passed the request along to Gore, who co-founded the media group that employs the women. Gore then asked the Obama administration if the former president could make the trip.

Once the administration determined that North Korea would indeed release Ling and Lee if Clinton made the trip, the former president agreed to travel to Pyongyang on a "private, humanitarian mission."

Before leaving for North Korea, Clinton was briefed by Obama national security officials and he also spoke with Gore and the families of the two women. 
 
Once in Pyongyang, where he was greeted with the fanfare of a state visit as opposed to a private humanitarian trip, Clinton secured the women's release after about three hours and 15 minutes in meetings and over dinner with President Kim Jong-il. 

The U.S. government says it didn't offer any quid pro quo. But it remains to be  seen what, if anything, Clinton proposed in exchange for the  women's release.

The North Korean news agency called the Clinton-Kim talks "exhaustive" but maybe they were also exhausting? Especially if the North Korean supreme leader is as sick as reported. 

And in the end, who has enjoyed more coming in from the cold and being in the global spotlight? Kim Jong-il or Bill Clinton?

For more Reuters political news, please click here. 

Photo credits: Reuters/KCNA (Clinton sits with Kim in Pyongyang) ; Reuters/Danny Moloshok (Laura Ling (top) and Euna Lee disembark from plane in United States)

For months, Bill Clinton has stayed out of the diplomatic spotlight in deference to his wife.

But the former U.S. president has dominated the news since he turned up in North Korea seeking the release of two American journalists, while Hillary Clinton headed to Africa for her first major trip there as the top U.S. diplomat.

Secretary of State Clinton stayed out of sight from reporters traveling with her on the 15-hour flight to Kenya. Her staff said she would not comment on her husband's mission to Pyongyang, which the White House billed as private.

"While the mission is in progress, we will have no comment. Our interest here is the successful completion of the mission and the safe return of the journalists," said a senior U.S. official traveling with her.

There has been talk in the State Department for weeks over who to send to North Korea to see leader Kim Jong-il and try to free the reporters.

Most bets were on the other Bill -- New Mexico Gov. Bill Richardson -- or Clinton's vice president Al Gore. The reporters -- Euna Lee and Laura Ling -- worked for Gore's California-based media outlet Current TV. 

Reuters photo by Thomas Mukoya ( Hillary Clinton greeted by Kenya's foreign minister in Nairobi on Aug. 4)

Photo:A compilation by Reuters of pool photographs and images provided by North Korea’s KCNA news agency showing North Korean leader Kim Jong-il from 2004 to 2009. The photograph in the lower right was released this week by KCNA

By Jon Herskovitz

The image the world once had of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il, with a trademark paunch, platform shoes and a bouffant hair-do, is gone and may never come back. He has now become a gaunt figure with thinning hair who has trouble walking in normal shoes, let alone ones with heels 8-10 centimetres (3-4 inches) high like he used to wear.

A look at photographs the North’s official media has released of Kim over the past few months indicate he is not a healthy man. There has been an enormous amount of speculation about what is wrong with Kim, 67, including a report from South Korean TV network YTN this week that he has life-threatening pancreatic cancer.

Kim’s health is one of the most closely guarded secrets in the highly secretive North and his actual condition is likely known by a handful of people in his inner circle who risk death or prison camp for themselves and their families if they ever whisper a word about Kim’s problems.

It is a state crime in North Korea to make any comment that questions Kim’s god-like status in the communist dynasty he has ruled since 1994 when his father and state founder Kim Il-sung died.

The most likely way that the outside world will ever receive any reliable information about Kim’s health is if his hermit state invites in foreign doctors to treat him. This appears to have happened about a year ago when he was widely suspected of suffering a stroke. U.S. and South Korean intelligence sources were then able to leak to the media information about what was ailing Kim.

Intelligence sources Reuters spoke to in Seoul would not confirm the latest reports of pancreatic cancer. They did agree on one thing, Kim is still sick.

Kim’s declining health has led to questions in the outside world if the man known at home as the “Dear Leader” still has his iron grip on power over the state he and his father have run since its inception more than 60 years ago.

Within North Korea, images of a weary Kim can actually help him win support among the public.

The North’s state propaganda has built an image of Kim as a person who works tirelessly to better his struggling state. The North’s propaganda says Kim gets little sleep as he travels the country by day and forms its policies at night.

Kim rarely is seen in state media presiding over major state functions or greeting foreign dignitaries. That is mostly left to Kim Yong-nam, the North’s nominal number two leader and its head of state.

If Kim Jong-il looks weak and sickly, it arouses sympathy and support among the North Korean public who feel he has put his own well being at risk working for them.

In the weeks and months ahead, there will likely be more speculation as to what is physically wrong with Kim. Some of the reports will be more reliable than others. But the actual state of Kim’s health will not likely be known until a time the foreign doctors visit again or those nearest Kim feel safe to reveal the secret.