http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/chi-0611300084nov30,1,6836399.story?coll=chi-newsnationworld-hedU.S. to Kim Jong Il: No Segways for you
Associated Press
Published November 30, 2006
WASHINGTON -- In a novel effort targeting the lifestyle of North Korea's eccentric president, the Bush administration wants to make it tougher for him to buy iPods, plasma television sets, Segway electric scooters and more.
It is Washington's first-ever attempt to use trade penalties as a way of personally aggravating a foreign leader. They target items believed to be favored by Kim Jong Il or presented by him as gifts to the roughly 600 loyalist families who run the communist government.
Kim, who orchestrated a secret nuclear weapons program despite international efforts to stop him, has other options for obtaining high-end consumer electronics and other luxuries.
But the list of proposed U.S. penalties aims to make Kim's swanky life harder: No more cognac, Rolex watches, cigarettes, artwork, expensive cars, Harley Davidson motorcycles or even personal watercraft, such as Jet Skis.
The ban would extend even to musical instruments and sports equipment. Kim is an enthusiastic basketball fan; Secretary of State Madeleine Albright presented him a ball signed by Michael Jordan during a rare diplomatic trip in 2000. Kim's former secretary, widely believed to be his new wife, studied piano at North Korea's Pyongyang University of Music and Dance.
"While North Korea's people starve and suffer, there is simply no excuse for the regime to be splurging on cognac and cigars," Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez said Wednesday in a statement. "We will ban the export of these and other luxury goods that are purchased for no other reason than to benefit North Korea's governing elite."
Gutierrez said penalized items were "carefully considered and carefully targeted."
Experts said the U.S. luxury sanctions would be the first ever to curtail a specific category of goods not associated with military buildups or weapons designs--and the first tailored to annoy a foreign leader. They acknowledge that enforcing the ban on black-market trading would be difficult.
