PRAISE BE TO ZEUS, I DON’T HAVE TO WRITE ABOUT THAT IMBECILE DENNIS RODMAN again, because Sung Yoon Lee has already done it so much better than I could. It’s not an easy thing to write a fat joke with the subtlety a respected academic must use to get invited back on the PBS News Hour to (polemically speaking) deflower those paired with him–or to the Oval Office. Lee not only manages this, he begins with a silly-yet-tragic story about...

The most ironic argument the administration has advanced to support the bombing of Syria is that it’s necessary to send a message of credible deterrence to North Korea, against its own use of weapons of mass destruction. There’s a lot to unpack there, so I’ll summarize my arguments first and expand on them below. First, I agree that we (and many other nations) have a compelling interest in deterring the use of WMD. I wouldn’t have put it quite that...

THREE MILLION DEATHS IS A STATISTIC, BUT A DEAD PORN STAR IS A HEADLINE! Sure, I guess the nominal leader of a regime that starved 2.5 million people to death and killed another 400,000 in concentration camps is capable of having his ex and a bunch of her musician friends machine-gunned. I can even believe that North Koreans can buy video cameras and make porn, although I incline more to the view that, if any part of this story is...

CALL ME OLD FASHIONED–it’s fine, really, I’m used to it–but I fail to see what’s so hard-line about the idea, most recently advanced by John McCain, that restarting six-party talks ought to be contingent on North Korea demonstrating its seriousness about disarming, such as by beginning to disarm. That’s pretty much the same view the Obama Administration had stated publicly, although it seems necessary to clarify it when North Korea has, more times than I could count, said it will never give up its nukes, when...

NOW THAT EVERYONE HAS SUDDENLY DISCOVERED THAT North Korea has a meth problem, I thought I’d link this five-year-old post and let you read (or reread) what OFK readers read way back when. (There’s plenty more where that came from if you put “meth” or “heroin” in the search window.) This is a perfect example of why we need sources like the Daily NK so badly.  They are the first harbingers of emerging social, economic, and political trends that will have important...

HAVES AND CAN’T HAVES:  Two million North Koreans have “authorized” cell phones; meanwhile, the regime is cracking down on the unauthorized kind.  I default to skepticism of any self-serving claims that a transaction involving the government of North Korea will result in social or political changes in North Korean society, but Orascom may be the one exception I’m willing to acknowledge.  I don’t think any state can monitor that many phones, and in a society where money can buy anything, more...