"Trump insults 'short and fat' (and nuclear-armed) Kim Jong Un"

Via MSN News: President Trump took time off from his morning in Vietnam to exchange insults with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

"Why would Kim Jong-un insult me by calling me 'old,'/ when I would NEVER call him 'short and fat?'" Trump said during a Sunday morning tweet storm in Hanoi that included a defense of his recent meetings with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump added: "Oh well, I try so hard to be his friend - and maybe someday that will happen!"

What do you think is the Trump strategery here?

"Kim Jong-un to launch Take Me Out-style matchmaking contest..."

"...to find a husband for his spinster sister"

The Sun:  Unmarried Kim Yo-jong is North Korea’s most powerful woman after being elected to the hermit state’s powerful Central Committee this month aged just 29.

Now big brother Kim, 33, is looking for a spouse for his sister and will personally vet 30 likely candidates from the capital Pyongyang’s elite.

The selection process is similar to Paddy McGuinness’s hit ITV show where 30 lovelorn lasses vie for the attentions of one bloke.

But in leader Kim’s version the stakes are far higher – with the hand in marriage of the sister of the dumpy despot the prize.

I hate when that happens

An understandable mistake in North Korea. pic.twitter.com/uWLVkY7mXz

— Andrew Malcolm (@AHMalcolm) January 9, 2016

"North Korean Defense Minister Executed by Antiaircraft Fire, South Says"

"Hyon Yong Chol is reportedly killed for falling asleep at military events and showing disrespect to Kim Jong Un"

Mr. Hyon’s execution was watched by hundreds of officials at a public execution site north of Pyongyang, the intelligence service said at the hearing. Satellite images taken in October of that site showed what appeared to be six antiaircraft guns and unidentified people at an imminent execution, a recent report by the Committee for Human Rights in North Korea said.

South Korean government officials have said dozens of officials have been executed, some by machine gun, since Mr. Kim took power. The highest-profile case came in late 2013 when Jang Song Thaek, an influential adviser and an uncle to Mr. Kim, was executed for treason.

Daily Beast: Has North Korea’s Kim Jong Un Been Toppled?

"Hwang’s trip [to] South [Korea] on Saturday comes on the heels of a widely publicized report that Kim has been deposed. Jang Jin Sung, a former North Korean counterintelligence and propaganda official, is claiming that the Organization and Guidance Department of the Korean Workers’ Party, responsible for promotions within the regime, has taken over the country. Kim, according to Jang, is now merely a “puppet.”

"Leading Korea watchers, however, say they doubt Kim has lost his position at the center of the state founded by his grandfather and passed down to his father, his immediate predecessor. “This kind of travel would be way too out there if anything serious was going on in North Korea, so I don’t think it’s a sign of a coup,” John Delury of Yonsei University in Seoul told The Washington Post of Hwang’s jaunt down to Incheon, near the South Korean capital. Andrei Lankov of nearby Kookmin University, meanwhile, called the surprise visit merely a part of Pyongyang’s recent “charm offensive.” “North Korean diplomacy has been engaged in concerted, well-arranged, well-managed efforts to improve relations with pretty much the entire outside world,” he told the Post. “And you would not expect it to happen with nobody in control.” (read more)

BBC: Why is Kim Jong-un always surrounded by people taking notes?

"In the photographs - from the country's official Central News Agency (KCNA) - Kim Jong-un observes a unit of women conducting a multiple-rocket launching drill. He strides around a fishery station. He gives a pilot on flight training a pep talk. He enjoys the facilities at a renovated youth camp."

But who are those men meticulously taking notes? They're not journalists, but soldiers, party members or government officials, says Prof James Grayson, Korea expert at the University of Sheffield. What is happening is a demonstration of the leader's supposed power, knowledge, wisdom and concern, says Grayson. It's "on-the-spot guidance", something instigated by his grandfather Kim Il-sung in the 1950s. "It's part of the image of the great leader offering benevolent guidance," says Grayson.

Despite the fact that tablets are available in the country, paper notebooks remain the favoured medium. "These are pictures that will be broadcast on television and shown in the state media, so those who are there want to be seen recording Kim Jong-un's every word," says Grayson. "It's about presenting him as having broad knowledge - however, it's ridiculous, he can't possibly know about all of these different things. It's important, however, that the apparatchiks that surround him are seen to be hanging on his every word."

Let Us Trim Our Hair In Accordance With The Socialist Lifestyle

Says the man with the worst hair style on earth.  And he didn't actually say it as much as he ordered it.

Kim Jong-un, beloved leader of 24 million citizens of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, has ordered that all male university students are now required to get the same haircuts his very own.

Lucky Nork guys.  No more guesswork about hair styles.   Buzz, snip, snip, shave, shave, product, and done.  Every university man looks like Kim.  Sort of.

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea is a genuine workers' state in which all the people are completely liberated from exploitation and oppression. The workers, peasants, soldiers and intellectuals are the true masters of their destiny and are in a unique position to defend their interests.

Says the DPK's official website.

The "liberated from exploitation and oppression" part must not apply to hairstyles, nor does the "masters of their destiny part."  Or maybe it's something lost in translation.  Anyhow, the university guys probably aren't crazy about the mandated haircut.

"Our leader's haircut is very particular, if you will," one source tells Radio Free Asia. "It doesn't always go with everyone since everyone has different face and head shapes." Meanwhile, a North Korean now living in China says the look is actually unpopular at home because people think it resembles Chinese smugglers. "Until the mid-2000s, we called it the 'Chinese smuggler haircut'."

Lucky for the Nork women, they get to choose their hairstyles from any of eighteen government allowable coifs, while university men get the Kim Jong-un 90's grunge hairstyle.

Are tickle here.

OK, be honest...

Who among us wouldn't have an ex or two executed by firing squad, if they could get away with it?

Why are you looking at me that way?  What?  I'm the only one?  Oh, fuck you guys.