READY TO IMPLODE?

By DOUGLAS WALLER

At a Huich'on kindergarten in central North Korea, the starving children appear almost skeletal. Nurses in Pyongyang hospitals can see their breath because the buildings have no heat. U.S. Congressman Tony Hall, on a visit to North Korea, spotted a teenage girl, so malnourished she looked like a six- or seven-year-old, picking weeds and grass to eat. Emergency food shipments from China, South Korea, Europe and the U.S. are being rushed in, but U.S. intelligence agencies warn that not enough will arrive in time to prevent tens of thousands from starving to death. North Korea, says World Food Program director Catherine Bertini, faces "a major humanitarian disaster."

Enough of a disaster to topple its 49-year-old communist regime? Or to scare its reclusive "Dear Leader," Kim Jong Il, into a last-gasp invasion of South Korea? Last week Hwang Jang Yop, the highest-ranking North Korean official ever to defect to the South, rattled nerves with a warning that Kim's million-man army was preparing for a suicidal attack. What's more, the North "is capable of scorching" South Korea and Japan with nuclear and chemical weapons, according to an article published by South Korea's largest daily newspaper, Chosun Ilbo, which secretly obtained the information from Hwang just before his defection. Kim did nothing to calm the jitters, ordering up a huge military parade last week in which thousands of goose-stepping soldiers marched past him.

The State Department was skeptical of Hwang's warning. United Nations inspectors believe North Korea was left with only enough plutonium to fuel about two bombs after it agreed to freeze its nuclear-weapons program in 1994. The Pentagon saw no evidence that Pyongyang was preparing for an attack and did not order the 37,000 U.S. soldiers stationed in South Korea to a higher alert level.

But there was no doubt that North Korea was in danger of imploding economically. In Pyongyang, where food is most available, rations for bureaucrats have been reduced to between 3 and 6 oz. of rice per day. Many factories have closed; the rest are operating at 25% of capacity. Pyongyang is without electricity for hours each day. Many farmers are too weak from hunger to harvest crops or plant seeds. Not only have poor diets made North Koreans shorter and lighter over the past 20 years, but parents "may be raising a generation with lower IQs because of the malnutrition," says a U.S. official with access to the intelligence reports.

Kim still has a firm grip on power, but there are signs of turmoil in the leadership. About half a dozen senior officials have died or been fired recently. The CIA has received reports that some military commanders have been cashiered and some units redeployed because their loyalty was questioned. The Pentagon estimates that North Korea's supply-starved army could not sustain an attack for much longer than a month. But U.S. Pacific Command chief Admiral Joseph Prueher fears that Kim could still "lash out should the survival of the regime become threatened." As long as that's possible, Kim has the power to bring others down with him.

--By Douglas Waller. With reporting by Jaime A. FlorCruz/Beijing and Frank Gibney/Tokyo

With reporting by JAIME A. FLORCRUZ/BEIJING AND FRANK GIBNEY/TOKYO