In a global unpopularity contest it is difficult to think of anyone more friendless than the North Korean Government of Kim Jong Il. He makes Robert Mugabe, the Burmese junta and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad look appealing by comparison.

So what can North Korea gain by its current round of provocations, which have alienated even its old ally, China — a nuclear test, followed by short-range missile tests, and now a threat to tear up the armistice that ended the Korean War?

The most common analysis is that it is an effort to capture the attention of the Government that matters most to North Korea — the US Administration of Barack Obama. Mr Kim wants one thing more than any other — a comprehensive peace treaty, with guarantees of North Korean security, in place of the flimsy armistice, and all underwritten by the US. It is towards this end that all his mischief-making, and his nuclear programme, are bent; and he will have eagerly noted Mr Obama’s inauguration promise to reach out a hand to America’s antagonists.

He may by now be wondering why he has not received more attention from the US, which has been far more focused on Afghanistan and the Middle East. Part of North Korean thinking is undoubtedly to force itself on to the US political agenda, and put itself in a position of strength in advance of the inevitably tough negotiations ahead.

It has worked in the past — even the temperamentally uncompromising Bush Administration gave in and agreed to bilateral talks with Pyongyang, and removed North Korea from a blacklist of terrorist states. There is something about the speed and tone of the current development — a sense of acceleration and a manic quality, striking even by North Korean standards — that leads one to suspect that there is more to it than the usual urge to affront the outside world.

The answer may lie in that element of the North Korean enigma least accessible to outside scrutiny — the internal power politics of its leadership. The signs are that Kim Jong Il is in complete control, but close examination of recent internal developments leads many Pyongyang-watchers to the conclusion that he is leaning towards military hardliners, and away from the more reform-oriented advisers he favoured in the middle of the present decade.

Reports, unsatisfactorily filtered as always through unsourced leaks to South Korean journalists, suggest that old aides have been dispatched to labour camps or even executed, and replaced with hardliners. In February the vice-marshal of the Korean People’s Army, Kim Yong Chun, was appointed minister of the National Defence Commission, and General Ri Yong Ho was made army chief of staff. Both are hawks, associated with the North’s first nuclear test in 2006, the kind of old fashioned ideologues who would always favour confrontation over compromise and who would glory in the prestige of membership of the nuclear club.

Why does Kim Jong Il need such men? The best one can do is speculate, but the answer is almost certainly connected to the stroke that he appears to have suffered last summer, which put him out of action for weeks. Other snippets of information suggest that he is wisely contemplating his end, and preparing one of his sons (probably the third and youngest, Kim Jong Un) for power. Any such transition will be highly uncertain and will require powerful supporters. In the absence of the Dear Leader, the only power that will count may be that of raw military force.

It is easy to overlook another, and more obvious factor — public opinion. North Koreans are probably the most oppressed people on Earth, but they are not completely brainwashed.

Plenty of them will take a genuine, and uncynical pride, that their small country has matched in technology the superpowers of the world.

Finally there is the most obvious motivation if all — the military one. North Korea has been on a war footing all of Kim Jong Il’s life. Comparatively recently, President Bush pronounced his Government to be part of the Axis of Evil — shortly before invading Iraq. Whatever you think of Mr Kim, it is entirely understandable that he should want to protect himself as effectively as possible — and history suggests that nuclear weapons are a potent guarantee of being left alone.

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