Yesterday, the Office of Foreign Assets Control (“OFAC”) added the over-fed Nork dictator, Kim Jong Un, to the List of Specially Designated Nationals and Blocked Persons. Adding heads of state to the SDN List is not only unusual but also largely symbolic and pointless. The effect of putting the Norktator on that list means that no U.S. persons can engage in any transactions with him and that any property or interest in property by him that comes into the control of a U.S. person must be blocked. So, yeah, all of Kim Jong Un’s bank accounts in the U.S. (all zero of them) are blocked. And if Kim Jong Un had plans to visit Disneyland (and get a new coif at Star Cuts on the way), those plans now have to be put in hold.

The largely ineffectual nature of the U.S. move, of course, did nothing to moderate the hysterical overreaction of the Nork Government, which immediately characterized the designation as “a declaration of war” and a “hideous crime.” Uh huh. Right. Arbitrary imprisonment, slave labor, torture, extrajudicial executions are harmless local Nork customs; interfering with Kim Jong Un’s trip to Disneyland and access to Netflix is a “hideous crime.”

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