Despite recent comments made by newly minted Japanese PM Taro Aso that North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il ‘…may be hospitalized’, Japanese intelligence reportedly has no ‘effing clue where the sumbitch is. Not that it matters, really, whether he’s dead or not - as journalist Christopher Hitchens likes to point out, North Korea is ruled by dead people already.

You may ask why Bush’s letter was headed “Dear Mr. Chairman” instead of “Dear Mr. President.” As one who has been in Pyongyang and verified this himself, I can tell you the reason. Kim Jong-il, the “dear leader,” is the head of the army and of the party but not of the state. The office of the presidency is still held by his long-dead father, the “great leader” Kim Il Sung. This makes North Korea into a necrocracy or a thanatocracy—no joke when you consider that its two chief pursuits consist of threatening to murder its neighbors while actually murdering its own civilians. One might feel slightly ashamed that the Bush administration seemed to raise the hopes of the North Korean slaves before dashing them, but we can perhaps console ourselves with the thought that—absolutist control being what it is—very few of the enslaved ever got to hear of the promise before it was discarded.

North Korean spy Won Jeong Hwa, who was nabbed in July using her feminine wiles to coax state secrets out of South Korean officials, has been sentenced to five years imprisonment.

Won, who had potentially faced life in prison, had admitted in court to her guilt. She spoke in a soft voice at hearings and asked for leniency so that she can be reunited with the 7-year-old daughter she had with a businessman in China.

But prosecutors said she is hardly the meek woman who appeared in court.

They submitted pictures showing scars they said she received in commando training in the North.

South Korean media said Won tried to assassinate a South Korean military officer in Hong Kong using an aphrodisiac laced with poison but failed.

She also tried but failed to meet and assassinate Hwang Jang-yop, former North Korean communist party ideology chief and the highest-ranking North Korean to defect, reports said.

While these details are salacious and all, I really love the comment issued by North Korean officials.

The North’s official media denounced her as a traitor for leaving the country and said: “(Won is) human scum crazy for money, vanity and swindling.”

Sounds like me…

Keeping up our ongoing coverage of the rumors surrounding Kim Jong-il’s possible illness/brain tumor/death/transition to a higher plane of bring, here are some alleged pictures of the North Korean dictator leader visiting an all-female army unit.

Da Man

The pics are not the best quality and are undated, so who knows? Not to mention that if I got a buzzcut and a pair of those enormous face-eating sunglasses, I could probably pass for Kim Jong-il.

Draw your own conclusions, my friends.

Did anyone watch the debate on Friday night? No, not the one where your parents spat expletives at each other after drinking copious amounts of alcohol - the one between John McCain and Barack Obama.

During the debate, McCain brought up the height-gap between presumptively healthy South Koreans and impoverished North Koreans…and while I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt on that one, I was interested to read this article from the New York Times about a similar difference between Americans (presumably slobs who feed their kids Happy Meals three times a day) and Europeans (who probably eat nothing but caviar and Weetabix).

While the conditions for North Koreans are troubling, Americans have a similar height gap to worry about, and it also appears to be due to a lower standard of living, poor health care and inadequate nutrition. Last summer, the journal Social Science Quarterly reported that Americans are, quite literally, falling short of Europeans. In 1880, Americans were the tallest people in the world. But by 2000, American men, at an average height of 5-feet-10.5-inches, ranked 9th, and women, at about 5-feet-5-inches, fell to 15th. Several Northern European countries rank the highest in height, with the Dutch coming in first, at just over 6 feet for the men and 5-feet-7-inches for the women.

The height gap between Americans and Northern Europeans can’t be explained by an influx of short immigrants. Experts say the United States takes in too few immigrants to account for the disparity, and the height statistics cited in the article include only English-speaking native-born Americans, and don’t include people of Asian and Hispanic descent.

‘Too few immigrants?’ Good thing they brought that up, because I was sure McCain would have blamed our shrinking height-advantage on lax immigration laws passed by dirty liberals.

CNN has posted an update on Kim Jong Il. It seems he might have had brain surgery, possibly performed after a stroke. The surgery may have been performed by foreign doctors who may or may not have been from France and China, and he could be paralyzed on one side.  Maybe.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/asiapcf/09/12/nkorea.kim.ap/index.html

Pyongyang, of course, says nothing. Why should they? It’s not like anyone actually knows anything, after all. I am disappointed in CNN; I expect my news to have substantiated sources. But then, it is North Korea.

Since North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il has once again disappeared off the face of the planet (if you believe the conspiracy, anyway) - I thought I’d make these available once again…our one-of-a-kind (well, not exactly - print-on-demand is more to the point) ‘Where in the World is Kim Jong-Il?’ t-shirts!

Bearing a striking design of North Korea’s favorite dictator crafted by yours truly, these shirts combine the fearsome (yet cuddly) persona of Kim Jong-Il with all the playfulness of a child’s edutainment franchise. (No Korean slave-labor was employed in the production of these shirts - that we know of.) Click on the image to see a (slightly) larger version.

North Korea, take a word from the wise - just because you’re paranoid, doesn’t mean they’re not after you.

“We see such reports as not only worthless, but rather as a conspiracy plot,” Song told Kyodo in what the agency said was North Korea’s first reaction to the reports. “Western media have reported falsehoods before,” he said, according to the report from Pyongyang.

It was not the first time North Korea sent a message to the outside world through Kyodo. Kim Yong Nam also gave the news organization an interview two days after North Korea carried out its first-ever nuclear test blast in 2006.

In another indication that the North’s leader is alive, Pyongyang’s official Korean Central News Agency said Kim sent a birthday greeting Wednesday to Syria’s leader.

Shadowy speculations from the U.S. intelligence community indicate that North Korean leader asshole Kim Jong Il may have suffered a stroke, after his absence at an anniversary parade was noted.

“It does appear that Kim Jong-Il has suffered a health setback, potentially a stroke,” an official told Reuters, speaking on condition of anonymity.

She said there have been no signs of a change in governing power and that assessing whether Kim was still capable of governing would “call for a lot of speculation.”

Earlier, South Korea’s largest daily, the Chosun Ilbo, said Kim collapsed last month, citing a South Korean diplomatic source in Beijing.

Kim has not been seen in public for a month and U.S. officials were closely watching the day’s military parade for signs to the leader’s health. As leader, Kim attended parades for the 50th and 55th anniversary of the state founded by his father, Kim Il-sung.

North Koreans call Kim the “Dear Leader” and he holds absolute power in the Stalinist regime.

And while I’m on the YouTube frenzy this morning…

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7578231.stm

So North Korea has apparently invented noodles that make you feel fuller longer. Since the country is facing a food shortage crisis, this makes perfect sense, right?

WHAT?! When you feel hungry, isn’t it because your body needs food to keep going? You don’t feel hungry for no reason, just like you don’t feel pain for no reason!

Now, the place where anti-hunger noodles would do a great deal of good is here, in the fatass United States. Here, people eat so much that they always feel hungry if they aren’t in the process of digesting something (a visit to the local O’Charley’s this evening has convinced me of this) so they eat all the time and gain weight as a consequence. From what I saw (in Japan, but this seems to be common to all Asia) there are very few people there who need to lose weight. So if they’re hungry, they probably need food!

Maybe America could trade North Korea some real food for their fake food, and everyone will have enough to eat and be able to lose weight and get healthier and there will be peace in the valley. Or not. Just an idea, Kim Jong-Il.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7557653.stm

Hmmm…what’s worse, occupying someone’s country for 35 years, or kidnapping a ton of people from someone’s country to teach in your country’s spy schools?

For more information on the kidnapping of Japanese citizens by North Korea, check out this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Korean_abductions_of_Japanese