Taking Kim's Toys Away

For years, the U.S. and its allies have cajoled, threatened and sanctioned North Korea in an unsuccessful bid to persuade its rogue leader, Kim Jong Il, to abandon his nuclear-weapons program. Now, the U.S. hopes, it's hitting Kim where it really hurts. Following a U.N. Security Council resolution banning the export of luxury goods to North Korea, last week the U.S. published a list of some 60 forbidden fruits, including iPods, Segway scooters, cognac, leather handbags, silk underwear, plasma TVs, baby grand pianos, jetskis, snowmobiles and eau de toilette. It's not just an attempt to personally aggravate the Dear Leader, who enjoys a notoriously plush lifestyle even while many of his countrymen starve. Cutting off the supply of expensive gifts Kim lavishes upon high-level loyalists to ensure their allegiance could undermine his rule enough to force him back to the negotiating table—or so the theory goes. But efforts to deprive him of such baubles are "at best pinpricks," says North Korea expert Nicholas Eberstadt of the American Enterprise Institute, "slightly raising the premium Kim Jong Il must pay for his goodies on other markets." Even if more countries adopt and enforce the U.S. list of banned items, Kim's cronies will troll the black market or continue to "buy the stuff in China with their Chinese registered and named trading companies," according to Michael Breen, author of the biography Kim Jong-Il: North Korea's Dear Leader. Still, any hopes Kim had of learning to jetski might have to wait.