Keeping up With the Kims: The Utah Blogger Who Watches North Korea

An "accidental expert"...

Michael Madden, a largely self-taught analyst on North Korea, works from a dark basement  in Salt Lake City.

North Korea's leadership might just be the toughest intelligence nut to crack, Anna Fifield reports on washingtonpost.com.

Kim Jong Un hasn't traveled outside the country since becoming its leader at the end of 2011. In those six years, he's met only a handful of outsiders. They include the usual cast of communist-linked characters — Chinese, Cubans, Syrians — as well as the less expected delegations led by American former basketball star Dennis Rodman, Fifield wrote.

Otherwise, there's no human intelligence on Kim and his cronies. Just state propaganda and satellite photos and rumors. Lots of rumors, she added.

But Michael Madden has become, as he puts it, an "accidental expert" on the men, and the occasional woman, who run the world's most isolated country. From his couch in a dark basement in Salt Lake City, Madden operates the website North Korea Leadership Watch, documenting the appearances — and the telling absences — of Kim and the people around him, Fifield wrote.

For more of an intriguing and timely report: https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/asia_pacific/keeping-up-with-the-kims-the-salt-lake-blogger-who-watches-north-koreas-elite/2017/12/21/610a1c58-e024-11e7-b2e9-8c636f076c76_story.html

Photo: Google.

Next time on The Allen Report:
Machine Learning on a Quantum Computer.