Thanks for finding this, and posting an invitation to chat. As you may have noticed, Buruma’s article made me uncomfortable too.I think it made me uncomfortable because it WAS lurid, as Riggins described and kind of too “cult of personality” based … Kim Jong Il’s sex life is the least of North Korea’s problems and certainly not the cause of them. Perhaps a symptom … but not a meaningful cause. Riggin’s states his counter-argument up front: “While there are many problems with North Korea, to be sure, they are not the concoctions and fantasies put forth by Buruma in his ‘review.’” And he follows this with a more complete analysis of the historical and political contexts that gave rise to Kim Jong Il’s power, and N. Korea’s isolation. Buruma’s article uses a kind of pop-psychology to distract us from the real issues at hand …If you’ve seen the amazing documentary “Human Remains” it’s a great exploration of this problem, and in similar terms - the filmmaker reherses odd biographical detail from the lives of 20th C dictators to show how meaningless this kind of fact finding, soul searching or muckracking is in the face of national and international political violence. At least that’s my interpretation of the film, and I think its persuasive. The undergrads bought it, anyway …