Maximum Leader Won't Get His iPods This Year

How do you pester a megalomaniac communist dictator? Take away his iPods:

WASHINGTON — The Bush administration wants North Korea's attention. So, like a scolding parent, it is working to make it tougher for that country's eccentric leader to buy iPods, plasma televisions and Segway electric scooters.

The U.S. government's first-ever effort to use trade sanctions to the personal aggravation of a foreign president expressly targets items believed to be favored by Kim Jong-Il or presented by him as gifts to the roughly 600 loyalist families who run the communist government.

Seems kind of silly to me.