U.S. Bans Sales of iPods, Segways, and Harleys to North Korea

The people of North Korea are living in poverty and are used to regular food shortages. In their extremely isolated communist economy, North Koreans routinely suffer through each day just to find a way to survive, while the country’s eccentric president, Kim Jong II, lives the high life. Now the Bush administration wants to make it harder for Kim to maintain that dichotomy by banning the sale of many luxury items to North Korea.

The penalties mark the first time Washington has attempted to use trade bans to annoy a foreign leader on a personal level. The list of proposed penalties, which were obtained by the Associated Press, targets items believed to be favorite purchases by Kim for his personal use or for gifts to the hundreds of loyalist families who run his government. The items being banned include iPods, Segway electric scooters, Rolex watches, artwork, Harley Davidson motorcycles, plasma televisions, cigarettes, French cognac, luxury yachts, and Jet Skis.

"While North Korea’s people starve and suffer, there is simply no excuse for the regime to be splurging on cognac and cigars," said Commerce Secretary Carlos M. Gutierrez in a statement released Wednesday. "We will ban the export of these and other luxury goods that are purchased for no other reason than to benefit North Korea's governing elite."

Gutierrez said the items on the list were carefully considered and targeted to cause Kim the most amount of aggravation. Kim, who is 5’3", is an enthusiastic basketball fan, and his former secretary—who is believed to be his new wife—studied piano at North Korea’s Pyongyang University of Music and Dance. So the ban will extend to musical instruments and sports equipment. "It's a new concept. It's kind of creative," said William Reinsch, a former senior Commerce Department official who oversaw trade restrictions with North Korea under President Clinton.

Experts said that although the luxury sanctions are the first tailored to block a specific category of items not associated with weapons or military buildups, it will be difficult to enforce the ban on black-market trading. "He's got folks who can move around nuclear weapons. If he tells these guys to get him a case of Scotch, they're going to pull it off," said James A. Lewis, a former State Department official. "Unless it's too large to fit into the cargo hold of a commercial aircraft, it's going to be tough to restrain him."

Officials acknowledge that a president who orchestrated a secret nuclear weapons program despite international efforts to stop him would certainly be able to obtain high-end consumer electronics and other luxury items from somewhere. But the U.S. trade ban, if other governments comply with it, will make it harder for him to do so.

In response to the October 9 nuclear test by North Korea, the U.N. Security Council banned shipments of military supplies and weapons to North Korea. It also blocked the sales of luxury goods, but so far each country has defined its own list of items included in the ban, and many European nations are still fine-tuning their lists. The U.S. submitted its proposed list to the United Nations, which is coordinating the ban on luxury goods.

American intelligence officers who helped to craft the list for the Bush administration said that Kim has a fondness for Mercedes, Cadillac, and BMW cars; Japanese and Harley Davidson motorcycles; Hennessy XO cognac and Johnny Walker Scotch whiskey; Sony cameras; and Japanese air conditioners. Kim is said to prefer French wines to hard liquor, on the advice of his doctor, and he owns an extensive library of more than 10,000 movies. Most of the information the U.S. has collected about Kim’s expensive tastes and lavish gifts to his most faithful bureaucrats comes from defectors who now live in South Korea or the United States.

"If you take away one of the tools of his control, perhaps you weaken the cohesion of his leadership," said Robert J. Einhorn, a former State Department official who visited North Korea with former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and dined extravagantly there. "It can't hurt, but whether it works, we don't know."