>>>In response to a protest against the North Korean regime in Seoul, South Korea this week, North Korea has threatened to "strike mercilessly without notice" if it happens again. The kicker is that the threat was made by fax.
>>>
>>>http://www.cnn.com/2013/12/20/world/asia/north-korea-threats/index.html?hpt=hp_t1
>>>
>>>North Korea has to be in the running for the most screwed-up country on earth. Living conditions are beyond deplorable. Citizens live in fear of being arrested or worse. If you give thanks at Christmas in addition to Thanksgiving, be thankful you don't live there.
>>
>>Maybe they can keep Dennis Rodman
>
>Of all the possible directions I anticipated for Dennis after his retirement, diplomacy was not among them. Those must be some pretty interesting discussions between him and Kim Jong Il.
>
>And to think people thought when Il took over that he wasn't crazy enough to succeed his father. He has proven the skeptics wrong.


FYI, as I understand it, Koreans have three part names where the first one is the family name, and the other two are the given name. So I think you meant "when Kim took over," though that's ambiguous, since of course, his father and grandfather were also both Kims. (In fact, Kim is an extremely common Korean family name.)

Tamar