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US Bans Sales of iPods To North Korea

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the kim-on-a-segway-would-be-cute dept.

gamer4Life writes "The United States has created their list of products banned from being exported to North Korea. This list includes iPods, plasma televisions and Segway electric scooters. U.S. intelligence officials who helped produce the Bush administration's list said Kim prefers Mercedes, BMW and Cadillac cars; Japanese and Harley Davidson motorcycles; Hennessy XO cognac from France and Johnny Walker Scotch whisky; Sony cameras and Japanese air conditioners."

5 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Newsflash by jimstapleton · · Score: 4, Informative

    it's nothing against Segway, it's against their not-so-benevolent dictator. It's something he wants, so they are banning it.

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  2. Re:Talk about effective sanctions by halivar · · Score: 2, Informative

    The sanctions are not directed at NK, it's prople, or its military. It's directed squarely at Kim Jong Il.

  3. Re:North Korea is missing something... by Wooloomooloo · · Score: 1, Informative

    The sanctions are aimed specifically at Kim Jong-il and the people around him that are actually able to afford those products.

  4. Mod parent up: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    +1 (Back to the Future Reference)

  5. Re:Open the darn border already. by b0s0z0ku · · Score: 2, Informative
    But to say that they were afraid of people in the East seeing "how good" life in the West was at that time is pure cold war propaganda. The West had just come out of the great depression, which at the time was believed (by western economists) to be a result of the inherent instability of markets.

    Do not confuse the Soviet lifestyle of the 1930s/1940s of the larger cities and towns with the lifestyle of the rural peoples. The rural people's lifestyle really hadn't changed that much since the time of the tsars - and like the serfs pre-1860, they were tied to the land - the only difference was that they were working for the state on a kolkhoz not for a manor lord.

    Many of the soldiers came from such a background and were positively shocked at the abundance that they found in the Poland of the late 30s. Remember that the Russo-German hostilities didn't begin until 1941 - the Russian army marched into eastern Poland without as much opposition as one would expect since some thought that they were coming as allies to fight the Germans. So they got quite a few "undamaged" towns and cities. And promptly started looting them and taking everything that could be moved.

    My grandparents *were* there in 1939 and my grandmother remembers Russian farmboy soldiers being positively fascinated with Western-made clocks and watches because they simply hadn't seen things like that before!

    It is true that Stalin sent a lot of people coming back from the Great Patriotic War to the gulag, but most of them were generals, war heroes, and similar.

    Now you're the one on crack! A lot of common soldiers got sent to the camps or forcibly relocated to settle Siberia. Remember, this is several *millions* people that we're talking about, so they couldn't have all been generals and notable figures. The camps were considered a key part of Soviet industry and they needed new meat to feed into the grinder.

    -b.