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North Korea just plunged into its worst crisis since the Korean War and it may soon threaten, once again, to turn the entire Korean peninsula into a “sea of fire.”

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A failed, nuclear-armed, rogue state is now in the throes of a leadership crisis and no one really knows how things may turn out.

The death of dictator Kim Jong-il on the weekend is far less auspicious than his birth, which according to North Korea’s communist mythology was heralded by a bright star and a double rainbow as a swallow descended from heaven to announce the arrival of “a general who will rule the world.”What no one really knows is how it is all going to end now that the ruthless, pudgy demigod is dead.

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For the last two years North Korea has tried to groom Kim Jong-il’s 27-year-old son Kim Jong-un to succeed him. But the idea hadn’t really caught on in North Korea yet, partly because of uncertainties over the son’s abilities and partly because even North Korea’s privileged elite are growing weary of the communist world’s only hereditary kingship.