Summary: Psychological assessment of North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il, leadership style implications of Kim’s personality profile, and North Korea threat assessment with respect to U.S. national security. … Update: Washington Post profile of Kim Jong-Un.

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Summary: South Korean and U.S. troops raised their alert to the highest level since 2006 after North Korea renounced its truce with the allied forces and threatened to strike any ships trying to intercept its vessels. The move was a sign of heightened tensions on the peninsula following the North’s underground nuclear test and its firing of a series of short-range missiles earlier in the week.

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Summary: Why North Korea could become one of President Obama’s most vexing foreign-policy challenges: For the moment, the Obama White House has bigger priorities than North Korea. Still, the new U.S. president would do well to keep in mind that Pyongyang is continuing to tweak its nuclear-weapons program. It already has an arsenal of ballistic missiles capable of hitting all of Japan and potentially parts of the United States. For all its paranoia, North Korea insists it’s still under the threat of “American and Japanese imperialists,” and says that it has every right to possess a “nuclear deterrent” to defend itself. Appeasing them with money and oil won’t be enough.

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Summary: U.S. president-elect Barack Obama faces major foreign policy challenges. Summary of intertwined issues Barack Obama inherits from George W. Bush.

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