Ailing Axis

Kerry Howley | February 3, 2005

Is North Korea on the cusp of collapse? Depends who you ask. What would be a gain for global freedom would be a loss for Weird News sections the world over. Kim Jong Il, having tightly regulated every aspect of North Korean life, has increasingly resorted to the random and bizarre, from constructing hamburger plants to issuing edicts on permissible hair lengths (2 inches at most, with exceptions for combovers).
If you're eager to meet Dear Leader before chaos descends (or doesn't), you're probably out of luck, especially if you're American and definitely if you're a journalist. But the best account I've read of a visit to this particular part of the axis is Pico Iyer's Falling off the Map, with "I Made Pizza for Kim Jong Il" a close second.