Reuters has the breaking news. You have to give Kim Jong-Il credit. As soon as the psycho dictatorial monster heard that his troops had snatched two US reporters last March, he knew he could leverage it into the appearance of respectability. Today, he did. Crazily.

• Original rumors were that Al Gore would be sent over to North Korea to fetch back Euna Lee and Laura Ling, who worked for Gore's Current TV. But Kim managed to get ol' Bill Clinton himself. Fuck a "vice" president.
• Clinton reportedly met with Ling and Lee, and it was "very emotional." We bet. For them, it's possible salvation. For him, hey, some other Americans in this fucked up country! More importantly: there seem to be serious hopes that the women will be coming back to America tomorrow.
• The White House is keeping its mouth shut, except to say what a private, nongovernmental mission Clinton is on. One report said that Clinton relayed a message from Obama to Kim, which the White House denied. Who knows. They can give the crazy man whatever soothing pablum he wants till Ling and Lee are out, then deny it all. This is essentially a hostage negotiation.
• Watch out, North Koreans can be tricky!
• 
  
• Toothbrush-mustachioed xenophobe John Bolton is not happy about Clinton's trip. Huh. Don't you look like an asshole now, John Bolton? Oh yes—here you are on Fox News, just now, sounding like an asshole.

In an article that would make Freud convulse from the grave, the male offspring of this creature from movie-lovin' Hell suffer serious daddy issues. Here's your primer, from eldest to youngest, in who may one day lord over the Malnourished Empire of Malevolence.




Kim Jong Nam - The Douchebag

Jong Nam was detained in Tokyo for using a fake Dominican passport. He was trying to visit Tokyo Disneyland.... [S]eems more concerned about acquiring, or at least wearing, bling. He has been seen in Macau sporting Armani caps, and Bur-berry and Polo Ralph Lauren shirts and sunglasses.

How Nammie felt he, a Korean, could pass for Dominican is beyond us. Maybe, just maybe that Republic is more diverse than we think. Uh, no. Wanting to party at Disneyland, and sporting da sunglasses and da Armanay, Nam has zero interest in ruling a dictatorship. Yes, he's a douche, and yes, he's the better for it.




Kim Jong Chol - The Gay

In school, he wrote a poem:

"My Ideal World." It begins: "If I had my ideal world I would not allow weapons and atom bombs anymore. I would destroy all terrorists with the Hollywood star Jean-Claude Van Damme. I would make people stop taking drugs…" He wrote a somewhat chilling short story called "My Father Was a Ghost," in which his father haunts him by pretending to be a spirit.

By some accounts, his father regarded him as too soft to take power.

In other words, Daddy weren't a-gonna have no sissy queer lord over the land, even if he's got pop's same taste in men: Jean-Claude Van Damme. A world without weapons, bombs and terrorists is inconceivable to Daddy, as is the endless years of psycho-analysis in that ghostly short story. The Tea and Sympathy-ness of Chol is touching. We wonder what his ideal world would have? We're guessing rainbows, dance music and summer weekends at The Pines.




Kim Jong Un - The "Brilliant Comrade"

When he was 7, the son was allowed to drive a Mercedes 600 with adjusted seat heights. He was also allowed to drink alcohol and dressed in a military uniform from an early age. At 12, after his younger sister had the temerity to call him "brother," he demanded that she call him "General Comrade." He was concerned for his people, after a fashion. When he turned 18 he supposedly said, "I get to ride Jet Ski and enjoy watersports, Rollerblading, and horse riding. But what are ordinary people doing?"

The middle son might break out in Camelot's "What Do the Simple Folk Do?', but Jong Un the Youngest reeks of pushy baby despot and is proud papa's first and only choice. At 26, everyone must call him the Brilliant Comrade in a slimy display of kiss-assery. One look at some entitled rich kids reveal the demon they're destined to be. For example, this spoiled brat.

Photos of the two younger sons are their childhood yearbook pictures. Obviously, they're all grown up now, but few public photos of them exist. Fade to ominous black...

Reports the Washington Post:

In the United States, the attacks primarily targeted Internet sites operated by major government agencies, including the departments of Homeland Security and Defense, the Federal Aviation Administration and the Federal Trade Commission, according to several computer security researchers. But The Washington Post's site was also affected.

South Korea's main spy agency, the National Intelligence Service, said in a statement that it thought the attacks were carried out "at the level of a certain organization or state" but did not elaborate. The South Korean news agency Yonhap and the JoongAng Daily, a major newspaper in Seoul, reported that intelligence officials had told South Korean lawmakers that North Korea or its sympathizers were prime suspects. A spokesman for the intelligence service said that it could not confirm the report.

The attacks were described as a "distributed denial of service," a relatively unsophisticated form of hacking in which personal computers are commanded to overwhelm certain Web sites with a blizzard of data. The effort did not involve the theft of sensitive information or the disabling of crucial operational systems, government and security experts said. But they noted that it was widespread, resilient and aimed at government sites.

Now, can someone please explain how one of the world's more technologically backwards countries can hack into any government's computers, much less ours? Have you seen North Korea's official website? It's less than impressive.

U.S., South Korea Targeted in Swarm of Internet Attacks [Washington Post]

Reports the Daily Mail:

North Korea may launch a long-range ballistic missile towards Hawaii on American Independence Day, according to Japanese intelligence officials.

The missile, believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 4,000 miles, would be launched in early July from the Dongchang-ni site on the north-western coast of the secretive country.

It is understood the communist state is likely to fire the missile between July 4 and 8. A launch on July 4 would coincide with Independence Day in the States.It would also be the 15th anniversary of North Korean president Kim Il-Sung's death.

Officials had initially believed that North Korea might attempt to launch a similar device towards either Japan's Okinawa island, Guam or Hawaii.

But the ministry concluded launches toward Okinawa or Guam were 'extremely unlikely' because the first-stage booster could drop into waters off China, agitating Beijing, or hit western Japanese territory.

The article goes on to explain that U.S. intelligence officials are not sure if a Taepodong rocket could reach the Hawaiian mainland, but, you know, better to prepare for it just in case.

To that end the AP is reporting tonight that Defense Secretary Robert Gates has ordered additional missile protection for Hawaii in the event that North Korea does launch an attack there. U.S. intelligence is also tracking a North Korean ship that they believe is carrying weapons.

What the heck is Kim Jong Il thinking here? If he attacks the U.S., who the hell will he sell generic Viagra and awful t-shirts to? And oh yeah, there's also the possibility that his nation will get blown off the face of the planet! Not exactly a minor detail to consider.

Japan Warns That North Korea May Fire Missile at Hawaii on Independence Day [Daily Mail]

The Washington Post takes a look at North Korea's global insurance scheme, which is interesting, but drops this nugget, which is really interesting:

For years, the U.S. government and law enforcement agencies around the world have documented what they describe as state-sponsored criminality in North Korea. They have linked the North to illegal manufacturing and trafficking of drugs ranging from heroin to Viagra, as well as to expert counterfeiting of $100 bills and the production of high-quality counterfeit cigarettes.

Kim Jong Il personally drafts all those "buy now Viagra 100mg x 90 pills $1.78 per pill" spam e-mails himself, from a bunker inside his palace.

But the insurance fraud is presumably much more profitable: North Korea's state-run insurance company KNIC entered into reinsurance contracts with nominally not-stupid companies like Lloyd's of London and Allianz Global Investors, obligating them to reimburse KNIC for certain claims. Then North Korea would fake-crash a helicopter into a warehouse, walk down the hall and file a claim with KNIC, and then KNIC would send a bill to Lloyd's for $58 million. Incredibly, many of KNIC's reinsurers agreed in their contracts to let any disputes be adjuticated by North Korean courts, and some of the companies "were unaware that North Korea is a secretive totalitarian state with one of the world's worst human rights records."

"All these companies learned a lesson," said an expert on the British insurance industry who is familiar with the helicopter case. "Never agree to have disputes decided in a North Korea court and never reinsure KNIC."

North Korea's claims were filed notoriously quickly, with meticulous documentation.

The scam paid off handsomely: An exiled North Korean dissident who worked for KNIC said managers in the company's Singapore office sent annual birthday gifts to King Jong Il—$20 million in cash stuffed into duffel bags. He would send back "gifts that included oranges, apples, DVD players and blankets" in return, presumably unaware that such niceties weren't as valuable in Singapore as in North Korea.

Allianz and Lloyd's sued KNIC over the scehem, but ended up settling and withdrawing their claims of fraud, owing to the fine lawyering of Tim Akeroyd, KNIC's (and by extension Kim Jong Il's) London attorney:

"There wasn't a shred of credible evidence to support their allegations of fraud," said Tim Akeroyd of the London firm Elborne Mitchell. "Anything you say suggesting that the North Koreans have been guilty of reinsurance fraud would be staggeringly unfair."

Nice work Tim! Blanket's in the mail.

Pictured is Bae Seok-bum, a "40-year-old South Korean construction worker who also operates a website for fortunetellers." Like most construction workers who dabble in fortunetelling, he is not the favorite son of North Korea's absolute dictator. But he looks like he could be, right? So when he posted this photo online, the media was like, "let's go with it!"

During a broadcast Wednesday, Japan's TV Asahi said the station had received information from an unnamed source who had met the younger Kim numerous times. It said the source told it that the authenticity of the photo was "90%."

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Hopefully he can at least parlay all this attention into a windfall for his fortunetelling business. Meanwhile Kim Jong Il's actual favorite son and likely successor Kim Jong Un, hasn't been photographed since this picture of him when he was 12. So by now he probably looks like this.

[LAT]

The North Korean page on the CafePress site is run by an organization called the "Korean Friendship Association," which states on its website that it "has full recognition from the Government of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea and is the world-wide leading organization of its supporters." This statement seems all the more true when considering that the Korean Friendship Association's web address is housed by North Korea's official website, which states:

Since 2000, this webpage has been the primary site for the country, including the main source of information about activities lead by the KFA for promoting international ties of friendship such travels to the country, exhibitions, conferences, various cultural events and undertakings. Nowadays it receives an average of 4 million hits per month.

When taking into consideration that the United States government strictly prohibits trade with North Korea or any kind, it would seem as though CafePress, a California-based company that produces and sells user-designed merchandise on the web, could be in violation of some pretty serious federal statutes for a) producing the items sold on its site on behalf of North Korea, and b) for sending regular payments to an arm of the North Korean government as compensation for the items sold on the site, something Walker inquired with CafePress' spokesman about.

"The company's PR Director Marc Cowlin wrote us an email saying 'I can confirm that checks are not sent to North Korea or any government agency.'"

Well that settles it! We're sure that the families of people like Laura Ling and Eula Lee will be relieved to hear that the CafePress royalty checks aren't made out directly to Kim Jong Il and sent to a P.O. box in Pyongyang. However, we're pretty sure that the United States Government might have something to say about it before it's all said and done. Maybe.

Kim Jong Il's CafePress Shop [Webnewser]
Korean Friendship Association [KFA]
The Official Webpage Of North Korea [Korea-Dpr]

North Korea defied the United States, its allies and a series of U.N. resolutions by launching a rocket on Sunday that it said propelled a satellite into space but that much of the world viewed as an effort to prove it is edging toward the capability to shoot a nuclear warhead on a longer-range missile.

Boy, this simply could not come at a better time! The world's craziest nation edges closer to full nuclear capability. Isn't that something. What's that? You harbor doubts about North Korea's craziness? Well then:

North Korea claimed that its Kwangmyongsong-2, or "Lodestar-2," named after the propaganda nickname of the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-il, was in an orbit anywhere from 490 to 1,426 kilometers, or 304 to 886 miles, from the earth, circling once every 104 minutes. KCNA said the satellite was broadcasting "immortal revolutionary songs" about Mr. Kim and his late father, President Kim Il-sung.

North Korea is now fully capable of striking the airwaves halfway across the world with tuneless zombie songs. Feel the fear, America. A new war could be just what we need to bring this economy back! [NYT; Pic via]

Three of these meetings actually happened, according to the Times website. Three just happened the way I imagined they would were I a reporter assigned to watch various other foreign dignitaries harmlessly shaking hands and exchanging niceties with Sarah Palin before being ushered off to exchange more niceties and possibly a game recipe or two. Guess which is which!

1. Talking Georgia With Kissinger

Gov. Sarah Palin wrapped her first day of motorcade diplomacy with a 90-minute meeting with Henry Kissinger, where they spoke about Georgia. Ms. Palin and Mr. Kissinger sat on blue couches, separated by an end table with photographs of President Nixon and President Reagan on it.

As photographers were led in, Mr. Kissinger could be heard saying that he gave someone “a lot of credit for what he did in Georgia,” according to a reporter who was allowed to watch.

“Good, good,’’ Ms. Palin said. “And you’ll give me more insight on that, also, huh? Good.”

The photographers were ushered out. When Ms. Palin emerged from the building, a news producer asked her how it went, and she mouthed the words, “It was great.”

2. Palin meets her old "Sister" Mayor.

One familiar face in what would be a long string of otherwise new acquaintances was Sergey Alexandrov, the mayor of Mirny, a town of about 40,000 in Russia's mineral-rich far east that is Wasilla's partner in the international "citizen diplomacy" network program Sister Cities International. A McCain staffer told a reporter had visited Alaska in 1998 or 1999.

A tall, ruddy man who appears to be in his mid-fifties, Mr. Alexandrov greeted Ms. Palin with a small bow and a handshake, then made a hand gesture that was an apparent comment on the vice presidential nominee's height. Ms. Palin pointed to the heel of her black pump.

A staffer said the pair had engaged in a "spirited" debate following Mr. Kissinger's remarks.

3. Palin and Karzai Bond Over Children

When Gov. Sarah Palin sat down with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan on Tuesday afternoon, the polite preliminaries to their conversation centered around children, as Mr. Karzai spoke of the birth of his first child last year.

“What is his name?” Ms. Palin was heard to ask, as she met with Mr. Karzai in the suite of a midtown hotel, according to a pool report.

“Mirwais,” Mr. Karzai replied. “Mirwais, which means, ‘The Light of the House.’”

“Oh nice,” Palin responded.

“He is the only one we have,” Mr. Karzai said.

4. Palin and Sundaravej talk cooks and cuisine.

For lunch, a security detail whisked Ms. Palin to her next appointment at the Royal Thai Consulate, where she was slated to dine over a briefing on a recent Thai-South Korean trade dispute from former prime minister Samak Sundaravej.

The two entered a dining room through an entrance flanked by gold Bhudda statues and sat at a table set with meat skewers and spring rolls.

"Did you cook all this yourself?" Ms. Palin asked Mr. Sundaravej, according to a photographer, who said the former prime minister explained that the embassy retained a cook on staff for such events.

Ms. Palin jotted notes in a spiral steno pad.

5. Meeting Uribe

The next stop on Governor Palin’s whirlwind diplomatic tour was a meeting with President Alvaro Uribe of Colombia. Mr. Uribe has a warm relationship with Senator John McCain, who paid him a visit during extremely unusual campaign trip to Colombia over the summer where he expressed support for a free trade agreement.

The meeting was held in the residence of the Colombian Mission on the Upper East Side in an ornate room with a pink stuffed chair and a chandelier, according to an account provided by the reporter allowed to accompany her into the event, Ms. Palin was overheard telling Mr. Uribe, “Thank you for your work.’’
Then the motorcade left for a sit-down at Kissinger Associates.

6. A Visitor Ponders The Implications Of A Palin Vice-Presidency

A reporter stationed at another side of the Kissinger Associates building saw Kissinger briefly emerge from a back exit to heartily greet a tall slim man of apparent Arab descent. Mr. Kissinger was overheard wishing the man a happy birthday before apologizing that a surprise guest would be "keeping me all day."

"Like your father, only I am allowed to go to the bathroom," Mr. Kissinger told the guest.

"A woman then!" the man replied. "Let me meet her!"

Mr. Kissinger paused. "Well, you two are about the same age, but she you would never know," he said with a faint chuckle. "Her youth is — in many respects — quite well-preserved."

"Inshallah," the man muttered in response. "Leave it to you, Henry. The one thing Bibi and I agree about…well let's just say this false Jew 'Levi' is on both our do-not-fly lists!"

"Well, you know what I say: even the paranoid have real enemies. And if the enemy of your enemy is your friend…"

"Fuck you."

[Image via North Korea Propaganda posters, which is an awesome site.]

Vice 2007, for its photo issue.
Oh good grief, who let those guys get in? Unclear. Somehow they managed to get on the roster to cover the 2007 Airirang Mass Games following several months of back-and-forth, but while North Korean officials left many of their colleagues at a consulate somewhere in "northern China" the Vice guys ingratiated themselves by getting drunk and joining a nationalist singalong with some North Korean "girls" from the Secret Police.
Key findings: They are among the only 15 spectators at the games, which feature 100,000 competitors. They find it impossible to determine whether anyone truly believes, or is simply lying about believing, all the shit they shovel about how North Korea is a glorious country whose model of self-reliance is the envy of all the world.

At the end of the museum tour, you must put on a tie before entering the final room, where you are permitted to view a wax sculpture the Chinese made of the Great Leader Kim Il-sung. You have to bow to the statue and speak in a whisper. After us, these Korean women came out of the statue room bawling their eyes out. They’d met their Great Leader. We were like, “Come on, it’s a wax statue.” But to them, it’s almost like they’ve really met him. They save up money their whole life to come to the museum done up in all their finery, tiptoe up to this statue, and cry their eyes out. And it’s really kind of a shitty statue too. One of the guys we were with said it looked like an old 1950s ad for hemorrhoid cream or something. He was right. It was sub-Madame Tussaud’s quality. (Oh, and they had a wind machine blowing its hair, like it was basking in a gentle breeze. We are not kidding.)

Parade 2007, for its "Who Is The World's Worst Dictator?" Issue
How did they get in? Contributing editor David Wallechinsky is the vice president of the International Society of Olympic Historians, so he could apply under a slightly less hard-hitting guise than Parade.
Key findings: Basketball is popular in North Korea, according to Wallechinsky's minder, because Kim Jong-il says “playing basketball will make us taller,” he notes, adding that "reports say that 7-year-old North Korean boys are 8 inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts."


Pyongyang, a 2005 graphic novel by French Canadian cartoonist Guy Delisle
How'd that guy (heh) get in? On a work visa from a French Canadian animation company that, mindblowingly, outsources animation work to Pyongyang. (We are not sure how that fits in with the whole "self-reliance" part, but okay.)
Key findings: North Koreans who've visited Paris speak only of the beggars and traffic. A friend to whom he lends George Orwell's 1984 returns it two weeks later complaining that he doesn't "enjoy science fiction."




The New York Review Of Books, 2003, for a story called "A Trip To North Korea"
Huh. But NRB subscribers are not stupid at all! So how did they get in? The author is a novelist with family ties to the North who manages to slip in as a supposed delegate of some pro-North Korea group in the U.S.
Key findings: The author seems to go in with as open a mind as she can keep and then sort of starts to lose it. There are four lousy planes on the tarmac when she arrives in Pyongyang. She stays in what should be the country's most luxurious appointments and there's no hot water and very little electricity. She comes across a procession of dancers practicing for a parade in Kim Il Sung Square and is told they've been practicing for two straight days — in temperatures below zero. And in a country where nearly all books are banned, Gone With The Wind is a national favorite and Scarlett O'Hara, according to a publisher, is "the new bourgeois heroine," about which the author says "it occurred to me that it is not only a story about a civil war between North and South, but also about Scarlett, who chooses her homeland over everything. And, of course, the North wins."

Related: From Hell With Love [Time Asia]
Journey Into Kimland
The North Korea Of The Privileged
The Hidden Gulag

*Oh, his slang is outdated, you say? Yeah, check out Pyongyang, asshole!

Yes! Which is why, as readers, we are happy these guys from Boston have founded the Politico of international news. (It is already poaching people from Politico.) And those newsroom cutbacks may enable Global News Enterprises LLC.* to put together a pretty strong team. From an announcement in March:

The Boston Globe foreign correspondent Charles M. Sennott leaves April 4 to become executive editor and VP for Global News Enterprises LLC, a new Boston-based website that launches next year to cover international news. Other contributors to the new site will include The New York Times Magazine contributing writer Scott Anderson, Times of London bureau chief Sam Kiley, Newsweek reporter Joshua Hammer and Newsday foreign reporter Matthew McAllester. The site will be led by New England Cable News founder Philip S. Balboni.

Since then we have heard they've added Meline Toumani, formerly of the Times Magazine** as a full-time staffer.

So what does it all mean? A gaping black money hole is what Denton predicts! International news, see, is the only sort of content less attractive to advertisers than politics***. And as we have pointed out before, Politico, despite all its trumpeted success, is still something of a mystery, business model-wise.

That said, the lead investor in Global News Enterprises LLC is a guy named Amos Hostetter who made a couple billion selling his cable company to Comcast. He isn't afraid to be service-y and may just feel like, since he made all that cash in the business that brought America The Hills he might as well throw a bone to the people still struggling to engage the four brain cells we have left.

To sum up, we don't know what will happen in North Korea or what will happen to the people who will try to explain it to us.

*Yeah, it is a worse name than Federal National Mortgage Association, for sure, but maybe they will think of a cute nickname when they go live?
**And also of being very beautiful, but that's totally irrelevant except inasmuch as this is Gawker we are talking about.
***'The Economist', of course, does great, mostly because it is so fucking expensive to subscribe to. Though I sometimes worry what would happen if someone founded the Craigslist of all those "Disaster Risk Reduction Advisor" and "Organisation & Governance International Secretariat Office" Help Wanted ads they run. Ha ha ha, they could call it "Formal Encounters."

Earlier: What Is 'Politico' Up To?

In the News, Claudie Lauer, Helen Kennedy, and Celeste Katz plead to the Christian right to grow a pair:

Conservatives already uneasy about Giuliani's messy personal history weren't too upset about her secret marriage - but didn't like her joking about it. After admitting to the third marriage, Judith Giuliani lightly said having had three marriages each is one of the couple's common bonds. "Joking about being married three times is not the way to win friends and influence people among evangelical voters," said Richard Land of the Southern Baptist Convention. "Three is one too many when it comes to marriages. One mistake can be overlooked, if it was a long time ago, but two?"

Over at the Post, another threesome of David Finnigan, Eric Lenkowitz, and Todd Venizia discribes the first Mr. Mrs. Third Giuliani:

Meanwhile, Judi Giuliani's once secret ex-hubby is a dapper classic-car collector with a penchant for Porsches and a yen for busty blondes, pals say.

"He seemed like a very professional guy and an easygoing person," said Charles Bandel, the president of the Tampa, Fla.-area condo association where Ross once lived.

"He seemed to have money. He dressed well, he had nice cars," Bandel said.

3 Times a Lady [NYP]
Focus on Me, Sez Rudy [NYDN]

After the jump, our full poll continues, so take a moment and exercise your democratic prerogative. Next week, we'll narrow it down to a runoff among the top vote-getters, ultimately revealing how well you've chosen when the POTY is announced in mid-December.

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Earlier: 'Time' Person of the Year: Voters Vote for Voter