Al Gore wasn’t good enough for Kim Jong Il?
So, we get to the FANTASTIC NEWS coming out of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea!!
 A national exhibition of August 3 consumer goods was opened at the Three-Revolution Exhibition on Monday.
Displayed there are ironware, electric appliances, clothing, grass-work, agricultural products and sundry goods produced by industrial establishments, housewives’ work-teams in ris, townships and districts (dongs), reutilization production work-teams of direct sales shops in cities and counties and home welfare service workers across the country.
The products draw attention of visitors as they have satisfactorily met the Koreans’ taste and their requirements for living.
To put events in the proper perspective, remembrances of Past Glories, and Benevolent Leaders:
On an August day of Juche 40 (1951) President Kim Il Sung examined cotton-padded military winter-shoes.
After watching shoes with care from the height of rubber rim to thickness of shoe-sole, he instructed an official that he should carry a pair of shoes with him when backing.
Next day after he came back to the Supreme Command, he came out, putting on the cotton-padded shoes.
Officials dubiously looked at him wearing the shoes unfit for hot summer.
After having put on the shoes for a week and more, he told officials that, while wearing the shoes for several days, he felt they were good as they were warm and comfortable for feet. What worries myself, he added, is that feet of soldiers might be frozen as the shoes became wet easily.
Pointing to the rubber rim of the shoes he told in an anxious tone that the height of the rim was so low that the shoes got wet like this even in some mud and the wet shoes might make feet of soldiers frozen in winter though cotton was padded.
At last the officials realized why the President wore the shoes in summer.
After an interval, the President earnestly instructed them that the height of rubber should be raised higher.
The officials were deeply moved by him who worried himself so much about the problem of military winter-shoes in the height of the hard-fought war, not a problem of military operation.
Regarding the 
 ? North Korean media lead up to it with:
The video of Mr. Clinton’s arrival in Pyongyang was featured in a news bulletin on North Korean state television on Tuesday evening, just after a report on the improving quality of biscuits at a local factory.
The freeing of the Journalists, Euna Lee and Laura Ling, happened about as I thought it would. It is a predictable game.  The quid pro quo (and here John Bolton can, to use a vulgar common vernacular “Suck on that“) is a photo-op with Distinguished World Figure (apparently Al Gore was rejected. He’ll have to console himself of this rejection with the fact that more people have actually heard of his television news venture). And Kim Jong Il wins the chance to claim this:
A little girl presented a bouquet to Bill Clinton.
As well, probably as important for Kim Jong Il’s propaganda purposes than a photograph of a girl handing Bill Clinton flowers:
The measure taken to release the American journalists is a manifestation of the DPRK’s humanitarian and peaceloving policy.
The People’s Democratic Republic of Korea have also thoughtfully stuck this to the forefront of its news page.:
Understand, the Bill Clinton visit makes up the top five headlines at the PDRK state news source. Impressive! But what I don’t understand, seeing as “Beer Summits” have become all the rage in the United States, and North Korea is now selling its people beer — well, that was a confluence of events that has been missed. Then again, it is not worthwhile to get these grim-faced folks in the photo-op tispy.
[Bloggers’ note: I look for images of Clinton and Kim Jong Il meeting in google images, with those search phrases. Image #3 is from me. Image #4 is from me. Weird. I’m flattered by somehow ending up there with this blog that’s read by — like 7 people — but it frustrated my attempt to find the now famous summit image.)