What we know: Not much. Other than strongman Kim Jong-Il's public statements, his aggressive military action, and the recent revelations of a secret nuclear enrichment program, knowledge of the world's quintessential pariah state is mostly guess work gleaned from fleeing refugees, a handful of head-scratching analysts, and the South Korean press. What we learn: That everyone else is guessing too. But perhaps what's more useful in the leaked State Department cables regarding North Korea is not information on the inner-workings of the country itself -- but the complexity of the regional dynamics. How various neighbors view the stability of the state is particularly interesting. In a February meeting with the U.S. ambassador in Seoul, South Korea's Vice Foreign Minister, Chun Yung-woo, expressed the rather apocalyptic view that "China would not be able to stop North Korea's collapse following the death of Kim Jong-il (KJI)." He argues that Beijing lacks the influence that it claims and that Kim Jong-Il's death will bring near certain chaos -- no matter what China does. Beijing, unsurprisingly, tells it differently: In a June 17, 2009, meeting with the U.S. Charge D'Affaires, a redacted Chinese official "cautioned that U.S. experts should not assume North Korea would implode after Kim Jong-il's death. He said that PRC analysts concluded that the regime would still function normally and discounted strongly any suggestion that the system would collapse once Kim Jong-il disappeared." But as tensions heighten with an increasingly belligerent Pyongyang, these vastly different interpretations provide insight to the repeated failure of the six-party talks (of which China is a key member) to persuade North Korea to give up its nuclear program. Curveball: Everyone wants to know if Kim Jong-Il is ill -- how ill, and what's the matter with him. While mention of a stroke in 2008 comes up several times in the cables, it's not clear what else is the matter with the dear leader, despite speculation that his condition may be one reason he is naming a successor, his son Kim Jong-Un. One particularly frank guess comes from a Sept. 26, 2008 cable: "Regarding Kim Jong-il's (KJI) purported ill health, xxxxx admit they have been unable to divine what has actually happened, noting such information is "top secret" even to North Koreans. xxxxx claims that KJI has a long history of recreational drug use that has resulted in frequent bouts of epilepsy and contributed to his poor health overall. xxxxx recalls hearing an unconfirmed report that, in the last several weeks, a team of five Chinese physicians traveled to Pyongyang, perhaps to tend to KJI. xxxxx cautions against reading too much into what he considers "pure speculation." Even if KJI suffered some medical emergency, illness "does not necessarily mean he is dying or has lost political control, or that regime collapse is somehow imminent."