Kim Jong Il, the man who would be North Korea's next absolute ruler, has a resume so brief and rumor-ridden that even the most sophisticated Asia-watchers are reluctant to predict how long or how strong his regime might be.
"We are really seeing through a glass darkly. We don't really know," says Donald Gregg, former U.S. ambassador to South Korea. "Anybody who tells you they know a lot is puffing himself up."
The sudden death of North Korean dictator Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Il's father, has analysts scrambling to figure out its implications for the embryonic dialogue with the United States and South Korea.
"This is the first Marxist monarchy and . . . anyone who's tried to predict anything about North Korea has been proved a fool," says Asia expert Richard Armitage, assistant Defense secretary under Presidents Reagan and Bush.
Among the questions haunting diplomats: Can a man with a reported penchant for women, cars, blue movies and liquor run a country, conduct nuclear negotiations and control a million-strong military?
The personal depictions of Kim Jong Il are based on a murky mix of rumor and intelligence reports, including one issued last December by the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency.
The DIA characterizes Kim Jong Il as "paranoid, spoiled and suspicious." It predicts that the death of Kim Il Sung will bring about "one of the great periods of uncertainty and danger" on the peninsula.
It says while Kim Jong Il would take over initially, his "limited personal ability, possible widespread opposition and the continuing poor economic and social conditions could lead to a coup."
North Korea paints a different picture, launching Kim toward deity soon after his 1942 birth in Soviet Khabarovsk.
According to revised history, his arrival had been foretold by a swallow.
He was delivered atop sacred Mount Paektu, where Korean civilization supposedly began 5,500 years ago.
The "Dear Leader," as he became known, has reportedly mastered all earthly knowledge and saved his father from a threatened coup in 1967.
But Kim has a darker side, according to defectors and South Korean propaganda. He surrounds himself with pliant females and an army of followers, the "Loyal Warriors," indulges in Dunhill cigarettes and Hennessey cognac, spends hours watching foreign films and unleashes a violent temper on anyone who displeases him.
President Clinton seems to be discounting the stories. "You have to be careful in judging people by what others say about them . . . we need to proceed on the facts."
Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord cautions against putting stock in the unsubstantiated profiles of Kim.
"I think it's just prudent to wait and see what kind of leader he is rather than relying on rumors and hearsay."
Gregg says Kim might change, once in power: "The way you act as crown prince is often different from the way you act as king."
