Arguing against Ian Buruma’s recent review of Bradley K. Martin’s Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader: North Korea and the Kim Dynasty, Thomas Riggins for the journal Political Affairs (whose tagline is “Marxist Thought Online”): “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’…. If Mr. Buruma wants to write something worth reading on the subject he should read less contentious books and view fewer James Bond movies.” Curious?

I’m going to turn comments back on as an experiment for this post, in case people feel like tussling.