Sending Kim Jong Il to bed with no supper...

In what has to be deemed as a gesture of displeasure, this from CNN:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Bush administration wants North Korea's attention, so like a scolding parent, it's trying to make it tougher for that country's eccentric leader to buy iPods, plasma televisions and Segway electric scooters.

The U.S. government's first-ever effort to use trade sanctions to personally aggravate a foreign president expressly targets items believed to be favored by Kim Jong Il or presented by him as gifts to the roughly 600 loyalist families who run his communist nation.

Kim, who engineered a secret nuclear weapons program, has other options for obtaining the high-end consumer electronics and other items he wants.

But the list of proposed luxury sanctions, obtained by The Associated Press, 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.

Why I say futile:

"The problem is there has always been and will always be this group of people who work at getting these goods illegally," Reinsch (William Reinsch, a former senior Commerce Department official) said. Small electronics, such as iPods or laptops, are "untraceable and available all over the place," he said. U.S. exports to North Korea are paltry, amounting to only $5.8 million last year.

Seriously all this is going to do is make him spend more money to get these things on the Blackmarket. So even more dollars that should go to the people of North Korea will be spent on getting Kim Jong II what he wants. That doesn't seem to me a very creative way of doing anything positive...