Fearing fear itself: Kim Jong-un’s most powerful weapon

But as former NSA analyst John Schindler recently noted, North Korea’s extreme isolation is a real problem when it comes to dealing with the current crisis: The CIA has virtually no useful intelligence on this hermit kingdom.

The problem is, very few people get to visit there, and the ones that have are monitored 24 hours a day, making it one of the most isolated countries on earth.

But the fact that North Korea can find itself on the brink of nuclear war, with no apparent protest from the population, shows what a strange and terrifying country it is.

I travelled to North Korea about 10 years ago to belatedly complete an “Axis of Evil Tour” that I’d set myself after George W. Bush famously named all the places he was about to bomb. My tour was simply about getting to see them before they were bombed. I’m glad I saw Syria while it was still intact, and I’m beginning to suspect Pyongyang may soon fall into the same category.

(And on the shallow side, there’s nothing more glamorous than setting your laptop’s Time Zone settings to “Pyongyang”.)

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