WORLD-RATTLING SMARTS

THE DICHOTOMY OF North Korea surprises us. Here's a country with problems that range from food and factory production to natural disasters that have included floods and famine. Yet North Koreans have shown enough engineering and science smarts to rattle the world with their nuclear tests and missile systems. Our cover story, "Hammer, Brush, and Sickle," by Managing Editor Mark Matthews and writer Geoffrey Cain, reports on several of the technological successes of this tightly controlled country. Included is an interview with Siegfried Hecker, professor at Stanford's science and engineering department, and former head of the Los Alamos National Lab. A frequent visitor to North Korea, …