On Saturday I wrote about North Korea. I've noticed, however, that our traffic on weekends is less than a quarter of what it is during the week. Which means that a lot of you may have missed one of the best items I've linked in quite some time.

Scott Fisher, an American who's lived in South Korea for many years, and who speaks fluent Korean, has written a travelogue of a visit to North Korea. It's a long read, but it's worth your time. His description just of the carefully-controlled, whitewashed North Korea is chilling, especially if you match it up with what the lives of countless North Korean citizens is known to be like. I know it's asking a lot, but if you've got a half hour you can spare, you should give this a read.

By the way, I take (minor) issue with Jeff Liquia. Jeff criticizes the fact that CNN has given gifts to the North Korean government in exchange for access. Mind you, the discussion of where journalistic ethics starts and ends on such things is very worth having. But I must point out that in diplomatic circles, the exchange of gifts is pretty much socially obligatory. The whys and wherefores are a whole discussion in and of themselves, but in these circumstances it is considered polite to exchange gifts. Failure to do so is considered arrogant. "This is just something you do," as they say.

Indeed, while I'm not trying to act as an apologist for CNN, I was somewhat impressed that the gifts they gave to the Kim regime seemed (seemed) to consist of no more than a few hundred dollars' worth of knicknacks. Handing Stalin a coffee mug and keychain seems pretty trivial in the vast scheme of things, you know?