I am writing this from an air-conditioned office in downtown Washington, D.C., as the city outside nearly melts under the humid July heat wave. Perhaps, it is the tie and suit-clad bureaucrats who suffer most in such conditions, but, no matter what, the capital of the mighty American Empire continues its normal operations.

I write having spent a week in Washington, talking to people about North Korea (what else can yours truly talk about?), and in this article I will probably summarize my observations about what denizens of Washington’s offices now tend to think about that peculiar country, located at a peninsula in distant