Experts: Kim Shrewdly Rules North Korea

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il claps on the balcony as soldiers salute him during a massive military parade, celebrating the foundation of the armed forces in Pyongyang, North Korea, in this April 25, 2002 file photo. North Korea said Monday October 9, 2006, it performed its first-ever nuclear weapons test, claiming it set off a successful underground blast in a "great leap forward" that defied international warnings against the communist regime. (AP Photo/Katsumi Kasahara, FILE) (Katsumi Kasahara - AP)

SEOUL, South Korea -- Kim Jong Il is one of the world's most mysterious public figures, a pudgy recluse with bouffant hair and trademark sunglasses whose image projects for many a B-movie archetype of the crazed mastermind bent on fomenting global chaos.

But the North Korean is considered a shrewd, if quirky leader, and his actions fit within a well-established pattern focused on a single goal: staying in power in a grimly poor nation where he and those who guard him live a life of luxury unimaginable for most of his people.

North Korea's announcement that it conducted a nuclear test explosion Monday was the latest move in the 64-year-old Kim's strategy of keeping foes at bay by raising tensions and stoking fears about the possibility of conflict in Asia.

The step showed that Kim has given up for the moment on seeking compromise with the Bush administration, which he feels is bent on toppling his regime despite its denials. In Kim's mind, a nuclear bomb is just a way to insure there are no Saddam-statue moments in Pyongyang.

He also wants North Korea viewed as a legitimate member of the international community and to win aid and trade deals that will help alleviate his people's economic travails and prop up his regime's popularity.

"They want to get accepted," said Michael Breen, author of a biography on Kim and a longtime Korea-watcher. "They honestly think in their own way that if they didn't act tough, they wouldn't just not get attention, but get invaded eventually."

Since rising to power in 1994 after the death of his father, Kim Il Sung, the founder of communist North Korea, Kim has often been ridiculed elsewhere for the khaki jumpsuits, platform shoes and puffy hair he wears to make his rotund, 5-foot-3 frame appear taller.

Despite his flamboyant style, he is reclusive. He rarely leaves his homeland and spurns plane travel in favor of a special luxury train outfitted with satellite Internet access.

But Kim maintains a firm grip, using the regime's power to crush dissent. Thousands of political prisoners are believed held in harsh camps. Entire families, even children, are jailed for the alleged crimes of a relative.

The regime also relentlessly feeds Kim's cult of personality. His pictures hang on buildings and in homes across a country that is mostly cut off from the outside world, and state-run media report daily on his writings.

He has always dealt with other countries by seeking to raise the stakes and getting the other side to back down. Kim, who has been said to have a penchant for "Rambo," James Bond films and other Hollywood action movies, has few ways to get attention besides taking stands that lean toward the provocative.

In 1994, during the Clinton administration, the North agreed after direct talks with the U.S. to halt nuclear development in exchange for promises of energy aid and diplomatic recognition. That came after some harrowing moments in which Pyongyang threatened to turn South Korea's capital, Seoul, into a "sea of fire."