Rising son: North Korea is one the most isolated, repressive, and dangerous nations in the world. Soon, its ailing dictator may hand over power to his mysterious 20-something son.

• Author: Smith, Patricia
• Position: INTERNATIONAL - Kim Jong-Il to hand over position to Kim Jong Un

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For 16 years, Kim Jong II has ruled Noah Korea with an iron fist and very bizarre behavior: He almost always appears in public in a khaki jumpsuit, oversize sunglasses, and platform shoes; he rarely smiles, and has a taste for caviar and Rambo movies.

Yet this man--who inherited his job from his equally autocratic father--has managed to make North Korea a nuclear power and a constant threat to its neighbors and the world.

Now, with Kim in poor health after a stroke in 2008, it looks like he's poised to hand power to his youngest son, Kim Jong Un.

Little is known about Kim Jong Un, who is believed to be 27 or 28. He attended school for a time in Switzerland, speaks some English, and probably German. His older brothers were uninterested in taking over or deemed incapable. (His oldest brother fell out of favor in 2001 after he tried to enter Japan on a fake passport so he could visit Tokyo Disneyland.)

News of the son's ascension comes at time of tension between North and South Korea. In March, a North Korean torpedo sunk a South Korean warship, killing 46 people. As a result of the attack, for which North Korea denies responsibility, South Korea suspended all trade and aid to the North for six months.

In fact, tensions go back to the roots of the Korean War, which began 60 years ago, in June 1950.

Until the end of World War II, the Korean Peninsula was occupied by Japan. When the fighting stopped in 1945, the Soviet Union occupied the northern half and installed a Communist regime, while Allied forces assumed control over what became South Korea.

Korean War

In 1950, North Korea, backed by the Communist regimes of the Soviet Union and China, invaded the South. The United Nations called up an international force to defend South Korea, with the U.S. supplying 90 percent of the troops and equipment.

By the time a ceasefire was signed in 1953, 34,000 Americans had been killed. But North and South Korea have never signed a peace treaty, which is why 28,000 American troops remain in South Korea, concentrated around the capital, Seoul, just 35 miles from the North Korean border.

When the Soviet Union and other Communist regimes collapsed in 1991, it left North Korea as one of the world's few remaining Communist states. That's when its economy began a catastrophic decline.

Around the same time, a series of droughts and floods led to massive crop failures. By some estimates, as many as 2 million people have died of starvation in...