North Korean kindergarten children cry on cue as they sing "Kim Il Sung, we want to see you one more time" during a rally in Pyongyang in 1995.

The abrupt disintegration of the Soviet Union in early 1991 deprived North Korea of not just its longtime source of aid, but also a major trading partner — a supportive socialist regime that was willing to buy North Korea's raw material exports and employ its cheap labor. That sudden void worsened North Korea's economic slide, and by the mid-1990s the nation was so beset by famine that some were driven to eat grass, according to one defector. (Since then, it's estimated that 3 million North Koreans have died from starvation.)

In keeping with Kim Il Sung's aberrant version of diplomacy, North Korea began to make conciliatory moves toward its former enemies, recognizing South Korea's sovereignty, inviting former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and evangelist Billy Graham for visits, while simultaneously making a conspicuous push to develop nuclear weapons.

But Kim Il Sung's sudden death in 1994 from a heart attack at age 82 threw the situation into even more precarious uncertainty. By the late 1990s, however, the dictator's son and heir, Kim Jong Il, who reportedly surfed the Internet and watched CNN regularly, was showing a surprising openness to the outside world.

That détente manifested itself in matters ranging from his sudden fascination with the American sport of basketball (North Korea devised its own special rules, such as awarding three points for slam dunks) to his lavish welcome for then-South Korean President Kim Dae Jung when he traveled to Pyongyang for a historic visit in 2000. The North Korean dictator also allowed international aid agencies into his country, even though that made it impossible for him to hide just how disastrously Kim Il-Sung-chui and chuch'e had failed North Korea's people.

Recently, Chung Mong-hun, chairman of Hyundai Asan Co. which focuses on tourism, killed himself by leaping from his 12th-floor office. He was was being investigated in connection with an alleged payment of hundreds of millions of dollars to North Korea in exchange for its holding the 2000 summit between South and North Korean leaders.