Well according to the Prime Minister of Japan, yes he can be. The Associated Press is reporting that Abe feels that Kim Jon Il can be reasoned with. That he is a rational human being.
An Open Letter to the Prime Minister of Japan:
Pardon me for stepping out of line here but for you, the Prime Minister of Japan to play politics and simply state that :
“Kim Jong Il is a “rational” man, but his country is headed in the wrong direction”
is both a ridiculous statement and also really understating what most of the world already knows. 
I was not aware that rational leaders let their countrymen starve to death by the thousands. Maybe tens of thousands. That doesn’t seem rational to me. His country is going in the wrong direction? Really? You think?
Ok ok. Maybe Kim-san is capable of rational thought as you say. But I suppose a cat is also capable, physically anyways, to play music on a piano. Can’t say I’ve seen that happen too many times though.
Granted I am not a world leader, well not yet anyways, but from what I’ve seen I’m not sure that a policy of dialog and pressure “vis-avis” the North will be effective. Why would it be? Honestly, what makes you think it would be? It hasn’t been in the past at all. So whats changed that would make you, the Prime Minister of Japan think that?
You mean the fact that N.K. has refused to act on its already agreed upon Nuclear disarmament plan until it gets $25 million in cash back from the frozen accounts? Is that a successful dialog? Honestly Mister Prime Minister that just seems to me like we’re playing the same old cat and mouse game the government has been playing for decades with those communist twits.
Mister Prime Minister it’s not that I dislike you. Honestly. I think you have a lot of potential. But for a man who came into power with a hardline stance against North Korea promising action on the abduction issue, so far I’ve seen a lot of smoke but not a hell of a lot of fire.
But more then that, above the politics for a moment, Mister Prime Minister, perhaps you and your LDP members could do us a favor and hire a PR firm. I ask this one favor from you because the more comments you and the Liberals make, the more you sound like complete asses. We don’t need to go into examples now do we? And saying that the North Korean government is going in the wrong direction isn’t just stating the obvious… It makes you look like a lame duck who read that in a newspaper somewhere. But of course that is just my humble opinion.
PS: I hope you’ll respect my letter but not take my visa away… Cause honestly that would really suck.
I think it’s a sad fact that Kim is rational - but only in what suits him. He doesn’t care if North Koreans starve. What is rational for him is that he finds the best way to stay in power - that’s using nuclear weapons to get what he wants.
So Abe is actually right in some respects.
It’s *because* he’s rational that he’s difficult to reason with. The outside world doesn’t have anything — carrot or stick — that is worth making concessions for, from his purely self-interested point of view.
rational =/= warm & fuzzy.
Most foreign policy people I know think that Kim is very rational and clear in what he wants. Basically, they echo what Raj says.
I don’t want to call Kim Jong Il rational. He is just able to think logical enough to keep his own dynasty of the totalitarianism.
If he were rational he would try not to let people starving in North Korea.
I don’t agree that Kim is rational. I’ve asked a friend in who works in Canadian foreign policy and he agreed that the word ‘rational’ is more politics then it is accurate.
Kim Jong Il is not rational in my view. He may be sane, he may be logical in his way of thinking. He may be charismatic or even highly intelligent. But he is not rational. But I did a search on dictionary.com about how one defines the word. Here are the results:
1. agreeable to reason; reasonable; sensible: a rational plan for economic development.
2. having or exercising reason, sound judgment, or good sense: a calm and rational negotiator.
3. being in or characterized by full possession of one’s reason; sane; lucid: The patient appeared perfectly rational.
4. endowed with the faculty of reason: rational beings.
5.of, pertaining to, or constituting reasoning powers: the rational faculty.
6. proceeding or derived from reason or based on reasoning: a rational explanation.
I think Number 3 may be accurate to define the man. But if you take the definitions 1 and 2 to heart then its totally clear that that man is not even close…
While I might agree that Kim is not “reasonable”, I disagree that he is not “rational” (and so I find it unfortunate that the dictionary you consulted listed those two words as synonyms).
The ultimate example of a being which is purely rational is artificial intelligences in science fiction novels. AIs are commonly portrayed as having no emotion, and always making the best decision possible according to the laws of logic (and not of morality nor ethics). Usually, to make the story interesting, the sci-fi authors will create a scenario where the “logically correct” action is in conflict with the “morally” or “emotionally” correct action, to create some tensions between humans (who are generally seen to be emotional) and the AIs.
In this sense, Kim can be seen as very rational: He lets people starve because to try to “fix” this “problem” would take effort, and perhaps money on his part. And why would he want to do that? What benefit does it bring him? Almost nothing. It makes far more sense for a person in his position to horde as much power as possible. So says rationality; emotions, morals and ethics might have different opinion on the matter.
And, as the Buddhists would say, compassion can be very different from rationality.
I should add that Kim may be described as “inhuman” and “insane”. “Inhuman” is not to be taken literally, of course: Kim, biologically speaking, is a members of the species known as “homosapien”, or “human”. What is meant by “inhuman” is that he does not behave the way a human is expected to behave; in particular, he does not seem to show compassion or empathy for his own people.
As for “insane”, I’m not sure if there’s an “official” definition that doctors or psychologists use, but I’m using that term to mean that his mind seems to think very differently from a typical person. Again, because he doesn’t show the same signs of compassion or empathy that other people usually do.