It’s hard to imagine that Kim Jong-il didn’t grin when his train pulled into Beijing this May. The visit to China, his third in two years[1], took many in the West by surprise. Kim has always been a canny operator, and should serve as a living reminder to the West of the potency of Sun Tzu’s warning that “if you do not know your enemies you will be imperilled in every single battle”. Amongst Western analysts and their South Korean counterparts there exists a consistent –and complacent- tendency to maintain that North Korea is in a state of