Kim Jong Il's son, the heir-apparent, has little experience or preparation to lead. Analysts say that means he won't be in a position to get back to nuclear disarmament talks and make concessions. He also may be tempted to take provocative actions to establish his leadership credentials.

North Korean residents line up to receive food rations at a Red Cross distribution center in Tongsin, North Korea in 1997. Discussions over U.S. food aid to the reclusive country were to take place Monday. Lasse Norgaard | AP Related Articles Key Moments In The Rule Of Kim Jong Il Kim's 17-year-rule was dominated by a devastating famine and friction over his nuclear program. The View From Inside North Korea Photos show "daily life" in North Korea, but one can't help but wonder what's not photographed. Key Moments In The Rule Of Kim Jong Il Kim's 17-year-rule was dominated by a devastating famine and friction over his nuclear program.

The changing of the guard in North Korea poses clear risks for the United States.

Kim Jong Il's son, Kim Jong Un, looks to be the likely successor. But he's still in his 20s and has had little time to prepare to take over the country. Analysts say that because he's weak, he won't be in any position to get back to nuclear disarmament talks and make concessions.

Kim Jong Un may also be tempted to take provocative actions to establish his leadership credentials, and the Obama administration has to take all this into account as it decides on next steps.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says she has been consulting other players in the so-called six-party nuclear disarmament talks, and met one of them at the State Department on Monday, her counterpart from Japan.

"We both share a common interest in a peaceful and stable transition in North Korea as well as in ensuring regional peace and stability," Clinton said.

She offered no condolences on the death of Kim Jong Il, just a brief message for North Korean people: "We reiterate our hope for improved relations with the people of North Korea, and remain deeply concerned about their well-being."

The Obama administration was supposed to discuss a resumption of food aid to North Korea, but the death of Kim Jong Il will delay that. Aid groups, though, are hoping the Obama administration won't wait too long.

"You could, in a very really real sense, see the needs for food assistance by seeing acutely-malnourished and large numbers of chronically-malnourished children in pediatric wards; [and] the level of stunting that was happening to children that were in orphanages and baby homes and in some of the primary schools," says Jim White, vice president of operations for Mercy Corps, who has been to North Korea seven times, most recently in September to visit three provinces that had suffered from floods. "So that is the way we were assessing some of the needs around food."

Though the U.S. always says it doesn't play politics with food aid, one expert on the subject, Marcus Noland, says the deal that was in the works was to provide nutritional assistance if North Korea rejoined disarmament talks.

"So the United States finds itself in the ironic position that it has agreed to the sweetener — to the food aid — but is unlikely to see much progress on the nuclear talks because the North Korean government is going to be in a period in which they are probably going to be unwilling to make any concessions," Noland says.

Noland, who is the deputy director of the Peter G. Peterson Institute for International Economics, says it is the right thing to do — to follow through on promised aid and offer a friendly gesture to North Korea in hopes that it will pay off. He's just not sure the heir-apparent, Kim Jong Un, will be able to or interested in taking advantage of such an opening.

"The thing about North Korea is, it appears to be remarkably insensitive to both sanctions and inducements," Noland says.

And despite the many years of food shortages and chronic malnutrition, the people aren't rising up either.

"There's no Roman Catholic Church, there's no Solidarity Trade Union, there's no civic forum of intellectuals. There's not even a personage like Cardinal [Jaime] Sin in the Philippines who gave a kind of moral legitimacy to the people's power revolution," Noland says. "There appears to be a complete absence of those civil society institutions capable of channeling mass discontent. So we could see unrest, we could see food riots, but that doesn't translate into significant reform in government."

How things play out in North Korea will depend mainly on the politics of the elite, and Noland says the U.S. has little influence over or knowledge about that. [Copyright 2011 National Public Radio]