N. Korea out of reach for U.S. spies

I think it's, of course, one of the, if not the, most important issue for us Japan. :
(April 14, 2013. AFP-Jiji)
Conflicting accounts from U.S. intelligence about the status of North Korea's nuclear weapons development underscore just how difficult it is for American spy agencies to penetrate its inscrutable regime, officials and experts said.
   The world's most powerful intelligence apparatus is often left to guesswork when it comes to tracking a regime that has cut off its population from the outside world.
   "I also have to say that North Korea, of course, is now and always has been one of the, if not the, toughest intelligence targets," U.S. National Intelligence Director James Clapper told lawmakers at a hearing Thursday (April 11).
   The United States gleans most of its intelligence from satellites tracking North Korean military movements, as Western spies cannot operate effectively in such a tightly controlled dictatorship. "It is virtually impossible to run a human spy in the North and penetrate the Korean state," Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and fellow at the Brooking institution, said.
   The vexing challenge posed by Pyongyang was driven home when a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency report came to light Thursday (April 11) that seemed to paint a more dangerous picture of North Korea's nuclear weapons, unlike previous accounts from American officials.
   The DIA report, revealed by a lawmaker from Colorado with a keen interest in missile defense funding, concluded that the North likely has succeeded in miniaturizing a nuclear warhead that could be placed onto a ballistic missile.