Kim Jong Il was nothing less than an economic catastrophe for North Korea. His political ascent, in fact, tracks almost precisely with that ill-fated nation's shift to economic stagnation and then its frightening free-fall into abject mass misery.

“What happens next?” is not really the question we should be asking. More important is to ask what the United States wants to happen next, and what it can do to bring about that outcome.

With the death of North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong Il, understanding the country's succession process is central to divining the future of this anachronistic, frustratingly cryptic, and often deliberately menacing government.

Kim Jong-il's death perforce marks a turning point in modern Korean history. Not since Douglas MacArthur’s push toward the Yalu has the future of the North Korean regime been as uncertain as it is today.

Ever since its founding in 1948, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea has maintained an aggressive and bellicose international security posture. Today, fully two decades after the end of the Cold War, North Korea's external defense and security policies look arguably more extreme and anomalous than ever.

AEI Scholar Michael Mazza offers his insight on North Korea's failure to launch a missile.

North Korea's Kim Jong-Il, who passed away at the age of 69, has bequeathed a legacy of poverty and starvation to the country's subject population, and a highly uncertain future to his nominal legatees, the Communist royals of his dynastic police state.