N. Korea may turn more menacing, but options limited

But even if he chooses to resort once again to scare tactics to try to boost his bargaining power, he lacks a game-changing ace to play that would seriously rattle the international community or spook markets long used to his grandstanding.

Unless he is prepared to sail dangerously close to provoking a suicidal war — and most experts firmly believe he is not — then the most he can do is demonstrate incremental advances in the destructive capability of his armory or boost weapons sales to other countries at odds with the United States.

He is quite capable of provoking annoyance and concern, analysts say, but much less able to generate the kind of alarm that would cause a serious reassessment of the risks facing governments and financial markets in a region that includes the powerful economies of China, Japan and South Korea.

In fact, a signal of reconciliation may be his first step by ending a more than year-long boycott of international nuclear disarmament-for-aid talks, possibly within the next month.

If talks break down, as they have at every previous juncture, then Kim may well return to military grandstanding in the hope of forcing help from a nervous outside world and, in the process, bolstering allegiance from his million-strong army whose welfare he has enshrined in the constitution at the top of society.

North Korea, which Kim's family established 60 years ago, is even poorer since he took power in 1994. It is reeling under the loss of international aid and the impact of U.N. sanctions.

A currency reform debacle last year caused rare civil unrest, showing cracks in Kim's leadership though his grip on power looks unchallenged — for now.

His mounting economic problems mean he will fall far short of honoring his heavily promoted promise to make North Korea a “strong and prosperous state” by 2012, and may undermine his efforts to win support from senior cadres to back his youngest son as successor to the family dynasty.

“The failure of this (2012) campaign, and it can only fail, is only going to make the regime more likely to resort to diversionary military spectacles of some sort,” said B.R. Myers, an expert on the North's ideology at Dongseo University.

Moves could include a third nuclear test, which would put the North slightly closer to having a working atom bomb.

But Kim would still lack the capability to effectively use it as a weapon — his Soviet-era bombers are no match for regional air forces, and he is far from being able to miniaturize a nuclear device so it can be mounted on a missile.

Another possible provocation would be restarting all of the Yongbyon nuclear plant, source of bomb-grade plutonium, that was being taken apart under six-country disarmament discussions.

Park Hyeong-jung, a specialist at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said the North could try to show off its uranium enrichment program, which provides a second path for producing bomb-grade fissile material.

And it may try to upgrade its mid-range missiles, which are designed to hit targets in Japan and U.S. military bases in Guam.

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