Intelligence Failures in Detecting Major Changes in North Korea

Kim Il Sung Jr Jr (Kim Jong-un) Toddles the Stage

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The New York Times, December 20, 2011 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/20/world/asia/in-detecting-kim-jong-il-death-a-gobal-intelligence-failure.html?_r=1 has written an insighful article about the difficulties in obtaining intelligence on North Korea including the succession following Kim Jung Il's death:

"In Kim’s Undetected Death, Sign of Nation’s Opacity"

WASHINGTON — Kim Jong-il, the enigmatic North Korean leader, died on a train at 8:30 a.m. Saturday in his country. Forty-eight hours later, officials in South Korea still did not know anything about it — to say nothing of Washington, where the State Department acknowledged “press reporting” of Mr. Kim’s death well after North Korean state media had already announced it.

For South Korean and American intelligence services to have failed to pick up any clues to this momentous development — panicked phone calls between government officials, say, or soldiers massing around Mr. Kim’s train — attests to the secretive nature of North Korea, a country not only at odds with most of the world but also sealed off from it in a way that defies spies or satellites." Rest of Article.
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Pete