On her first diplomatic visit abroad, US secretary of state Hillary Clinton is casting aside normal diplomatic caution. She waded into a public discussion about who will lead North Korea after ailing Kim Jong Il, known as the Dear Leader, leaves power. She even went at it with gusto, saying rumors about the reclusive Kim’s health have added to uncertainty that already swirls around nuclear-armed North Korea.

Hillary was holding a joint press conference with South Korean Foreign Minister Yu Myung-hwan, where the matter came up again. She broached it hours earlier on her plane flight from Indonesia to South Korea. Responding to the query if she thought her candid discussion about the topic might provoke North Korea, Clinton said candidly, ‘No, I do not...this is not some kind of a classified matter that is not being discussed in many circles. But for me, as we look at planning and contingency planning, we are taking everything into account.’

Earlier in the press conference, Clinton said Washington will deal with the Kim regime still in power in Pyongyang, but that the future holds uncertainty over who will rule North Korea. ‘It’s very clear that as Minister Yu said, when you are thinking about future dealings with a government that does not have any clear succession – they don’t have a president, they don’t have a prime minister – that is something you have to think about,’ she said, adding that the succession question is muddying the waters, as it were, in already tense diplomatic negotiations with the north.

Clinton said South Korea is particularly worried “about what’s up in North Korea, what the succession could be, what it means for them, and they are looking for us to use our best efforts to try to get the agenda of de-nuclearising and nonproliferation back in gear.”

“Everybody is trying to sort of read the tea leaves as to what is happening and what is likely to occur, and there is a lot of guessing going on,” Clinton said, referring to talks between Chinese, South Korean, Japanese and U.S. officials about the situation in the North.