NY Daily News July 6, 2006
Spying on Kim is all but impossible
By James Gordon Meek
WASHINGTON - U.S. spies have the greatest technology for stealing enemies' secrets, but it's little help with a country still in the Stone Age like North Korea, experts said yesterday.
The Communist regime of Kim Jong Il makes "axis of evil" twin Iran seem open compared with his society, which frowns on such modern luxuries as electricity and telephones.
The challenges of getting intelligence about North Korea "are huge," said Ted Carpenter of the Cato Institute, a Washington think tank. "Penetrating the regime's decision-making ... is probably the toughest task in the world."
John Pike, a defense analyst at GlobalSecurity.org, said if the CIA wanted to recruit a leadership source there, "I just don't see how you could do it."
"The entire population is controlled and it's not someplace where you can blend in," said a U.S. intelligence official.
The country's seal features a hydroelectric dam and high-tension power lines. But nighttime satellite imagery shows South Korea lit like a birthday cake while North Korea is black. The North consumes a paltry 17 billion kilowatt hours a year, compared with the South's 321 billion kilowatt hours.
For spies hoping to tap calls, it's easy because there are only 980,000 land lines for 23 million people. The downside is there are no cell phones to listen in on.
"Internet access is granted only to the elite, and it's heavily monitored and controlled," added the U.S. official.
From space, the capital, Pyongyang, with 2 million residents, appears eerily empty. Satellite photos show highways - some 13 lanes wide - with no vehicles. Pristine soccer arenas have tiny parking lots, empty but for a few military trucks.
Rep. Curt Weldon (R-Pa.), who led two delegations to North Korea, blasted both the Clinton and Bush administrations for failing to beef up intelligence and relying too heavily on technology.
"We have no reliable [human intelligence] in North Korea at all," he said. "It's very troubling."
© Copyright 2006, Daily News, L.P.
