Respect Authority

Well, Kim Jong-il ran out of DVDs.

North Korea sent a rocket-shaped “fuck you” to the rest of the world today, launching a projectile the country swears, like, totally only sent a satellite into space. Unfortunately for North Korea — and the United Nations, which I suspect always gets frustrated by situations capable of highlighting their insignificance — the rest of the world isn’t buying it. In fact, people are fairly confident Kim is up to all sorts of shenanigans, like perhaps plotting global domination as made possible by nuclear warhead-bearing long-range missiles.

Obama called on the UN to “punish” the country today, which makes me picture all 23 million people in North Korea taking a collective time out to “think about what they’ve done.” Sadly, the UN has traditionally displayed even less power for enforcement than most exasperated parents. In truth, I’d have much rather grown up with the UN as my parental body — giving up groundings and chores for a growing list of security resolutions that, let’s be honest, it wouldn’t really hurt me to ignore.

In any case, I find myself surprisingly unsurprised by this latest development. To be frank, some part of me assumed North Korea has been testing all manner of nuclear missiles for decades, they’ve just managed to keep it on the DL. So if the recession, environment and dual war effort weren’t enough to keep you worrying a full 24 hours a day, 7 days a week — add to the pile “very real possibility of imminent nuclear war.”

Happy Sunday.

Want to watch the latest Harry Potter movie at home like, two whole weeks before it comes out on DVD? Go to Korea.

Kim watches his favorite movies in the buff.

Warner Bros. said Wednesday it plans to become the first Hollywood Studio to make movies available through video-on-demand two weeks before their DVD release in Korea. The goal is to take “full advantage of Korea’s extraordinary digital infrastructure,” and obviously for Warner, to make dolla’ dolla’ bills. (Or I guess in Korea, dolla’ dolla’ won).

Indeed, Korea is pretty super-duper tech savvy. Approximately 94% of households there have broadband connections, and more than 47% of people surveyed say they’ve downloaded a movie from the Internet at least once (no word on the porn-to-non-porn ratio, sadly). They also own nuclear weapons, and have so totally made technology their bitch that the country plans to fund a tech center in South Africa, which is a pointless gesture if I ever saw one.

Here’s my question: If Koreans love movies so much, why do they keep trying to sell theirs to me at the laundromat?