Bad Korea Move*

I'd probably be a little more wigged out about North Korea supposedly testing a nuclear weapon if I didn't get the impression that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is a blustering, delusional, tough-talking-but-ultimately-mostly-harmless nut (well, harmless to all but his own people, anyway). He seems crazy more in a cartoony way than a Hitler way...I think he just likes all the attention he's getting.

Anyhow, pretty much everything I know about North Korea I learned from reading Guy Delisle's excellent Pyongyang graphic novel, an autobiographical travelogue of the author's time in the mysterious nation, working as an animation supervisor for a French film company. It's a pretty remarkable, if grim, story about what goes on in a country that has virtually no freedom, no contact with the outside world, and a lunatic at the helm. I've reccommended it before, and I'll do so again.

*I couldn't think of a good title for this post, so I stole this one from The Daily Show.