No iPod for Kim Jong Il

[the_yellow_dart]

Yahoo News

WASHINGTON - The Bush administration wants        North Korea's attention, so like a scolding parent it's trying to make it tougher for that country's eccentric leader to buy iPods, plasma televisions and Segway electric scooters. The U.S. government's first-ever effort to use trade sanctions to personally aggravate a foreign president expressly targets items believed to be favored by Kim Jong Il or presented by him as gifts to the roughly 600 loyalist families who run the communist government.

Kim, who engineered a secret nuclear weapons program, has other options for obtaining the high-end consumer electronics and other items he wants.

But the list of proposed luxury sanctions, obtained by The Associated Press, aims to make Kim's swanky life harder: No more cognac, Rolex watches, cigarettes, artwork, expensive cars, Harley Davidson motorcycles or even personal watercraft, such as Jet Skis.

The new ban would extend even to musical instruments and sports equipment. The 5-foot-3 Kim is an enthusiastic basketball fan; then-Secretary of State        Madeleine Albright presented him with a ball signed by Michael Jordan during a rare diplomatic trip in 2000. Kim's former secretary, widely believed to be his new wife, studied piano at the Pyongyang University of Music and Dance.

Experts said the sanctions effort — being coordinated under the        United Nations — would be the first ever to curtail a specific category of goods not associated with military buildups or weapons designs, especially one so tailored to annoy a foreign leader. U.S. officials acknowledge that enforcing the ban on black-market trading would be difficult.

In Beijing on Wednesday, U.S. and North Korean envoys failed to reach an agreement on when to resume six-party disarmament negotiations on Kim's atomic weapons program. Japan's Kyodo News agency cited unidentified people at the talks as saying that Kim demanded the U.S. freeze sanctions on luxury goods and other items imposed after the North's first nuclear test on Oct. 9.

The population in North Korea, one of the world's most isolated economies, is impoverished and routinely suffers widescale food shortages. The new trade ban would forbid U.S. shipments there of Rolexes, French cognac, plasma TVs, yachts and more — all items favored by Kim but unattainable by most of the country.

"It's a new concept; it's kind of creative," said William Reinsch, a former senior        Commerce Department official who oversaw trade restrictions with North Korea during        Bill Clinton's presidency. Reinsch predicted governments will comply with the new sanctions, but agreed that efforts to block all underground shipments will be frustrated.

"The problem is there has always been and will always be this group of people who work at getting these goods illegally," Reinsch said. Small electronics, such as iPods or laptops, are "untraceable and available all over the place," he said. U.S. exports to North Korea are paltry, amounting to only $5.8 million last year; nearly all those exports were food.

The Distilled Spirits Council of the United States, the trade group for the liquor industry, said it supports the administration's policies toward North Korea. The Washington-based Personal Watercraft Industry Association said it also supports the U.S. sanctions — although it bristled at the notion a Jet Ski was a luxury.

"The thousands of Americans and Canadians who build, ship and sell personal watercraft are patriots first," said Maureen Healey, head of the trade group. She said it endorsed the ban "because of the narrow nature of this ban and the genuine dangers that responsible world governments are trying to stave off."

Defectors to        South Korea have described Kim giving expensive gifts of cars, liquor and Japanese-made appliances to his most faithful bureaucrats.

"If you take away one of the tools of his control, perhaps you weaken the cohesion of his leadership," said Robert J. Einhorn, a former senior State Department official who visited North Korea with Albright and dined extravagantly there. "It can't hurt, but whether it works, we don't know."

Responding to North Korea's nuclear test Oct. 9, the        U.N. Security Council voted to ban military supplies and weapons shipments — sanctions already imposed by the United States. It also banned sales of luxury goods but so far has left each country to define such items. Japan included beef, caviar and fatty tuna, along with expensive cars, motorcycles, cameras and more. Many European nations are still working on their lists.

U.S. intelligence officials who helped produce the Bush administration's list said Kim prefers Mercedes, BMW and Cadillac cars; Japanese and Harley Davidson motorcycles; Hennessy XO cognac from France and Johnny Walker Scotch whisky; Sony cameras and Japanese air conditioners.

Kim is reportedly under his physician's orders to avoid hard liquor and prefers French wines. He also is said to own an extensive movie library of more than 10,000 titles and prefers films about James Bond and Godzilla, along with Clint Eastwood's 1993 drama, "In the Line of Fire," and Whitney Houston's 1992 love story, "The Bodyguard."

Much of the U.S. information about Kim's preferences comes from defectors, including Kenji Fujimoto, the Japanese chef who fled in 2001 and wrote a book about his time with the North Korean leader.

Threatening to take away iPods and Segways? I bet he's shaking in his wittow booties...

This is so dumb!

[Satty]

I really want to test ride a Segway.

[the_yellow_dart]

I tried one out at the Ontario Science Center. I felt really unstable at first - you tip back slightly, the Segway moves back to compensate. This tips you forward slightly, and you rock a little bit. Apparently you get more used to it, and your body's stabilization instinct gets more in tune with the Segway's automated stabilization. It was only when standing still that it felt a little off. Once I got moving it was OK, surprisingly easy to drive.

[Sixty8panther]

Fu#k that... just send him a nice DTS-L as a gift

to burry the hatchet. Put a nasty ass plastique

bomb in it but make it go off on like the 30th key

cycle. That way if he's paraniod of the USA's gift

he'll have some security guard drive it a few

times and he'll loose his suspicion.

Then when that little Oriental "Napoleon MINI-ME"

goes out for a nice drive through his socialist hole

in the wall country and he least suspects anything

we'll get rid of a FWD Northstar powered car &

a threat more menacing than Saddam ever was.

[the_yellow_dart]

Fu#k that... just send him a nice DTS-L as a gift

to burry the hatchet. Put a nasty ass plastique

bomb in it but make it go off on like the 30th key

cycle. That way if he's paraniod of the USA's gift

he'll have some security guard drive it a few

times and he'll loose his suspicion.

Then when that little Oriental "Napoleon MINI-ME"

goes out for a nice drive through his socialist hole

in the wall country and he least suspects anything

we'll get rid of a FWD Northstar powered car &

a threat more menacing than Saddam ever was.

221608[/snapback]

I bet the US waits until they have the nuclear missile defence system up first. Otherwise, I bet they would have already done something.

I'm fine with that. If New York or Washington gets nuked, Toronto's not going to look so hot.

[Croc]

I really want to test ride a Segway.

221580[/snapback]

It takes a minute to get the hang of it, but after that it's pretty cool.

[FAPTurbo]

General Douglas MacArthur called from beyond the grave...

He's laughing his ass off and calling us all pansies.