For more than two weeks now, White House officials have been receiving frequent updates on a rusting North Korean ship, the Kang Nam 1, as it makes its way dead-slow across the South China Sea. Earlier this month, Mr. Obama’s aides thought the aging hulk — with its long rap sheet for surreptitious deliveries of missiles and arms — would be the first test of a United Nations Security Council resolution giving countries the right to hail suspect shipments, and order them to a nearby port for inspection.
But now some top officials in the Obama administration are beginning to wonder whether Kim Jong-il, the North Korean leader, ordered the Kang Nam 1 out on a fishing expedition — in hopes that a new American president will be his first catch.
“The whole thing just doesn’t add up,” said one senior administration official who has been tracking the cargo ship’s lazy summer journey. “My worry is that we make a big demand about seeing the cargo, and then there’s a tense standoff, and when it’s all over we discover that old man Kim set us up to look like George Bush searching for nonexistent W.M.D.”
Are the North Koreans really that wily?
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North Korea sends U.S. searching for ship top nowhere
