North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, who says he has been "humiliated" by Prime Minister Koizumi and will never again talk to him, formed a secret alliance with Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein and al-Qaeda, even as his regime was preparing thousands of liters of chemical weapons to drop over Japan's cities.
Surprised? You haven't been reading Japan's best-selling weekly magazine and its legions of unnamed "experts," who portray Kim as a cross between Dr. Evil and Charlie Chaplin, fuming and "stamping his feet" over Japanese skullduggery.
The stories are just more gasoline on the bonfire of reason and logic that has been burning away since the return to Japan of five kidnap victims from Pyongyang last October. Endless TV coverage and documentaries together with dozens of angry op ed pieces carried in Japanese newspapers, all add up to a media campaign tinged with hysteria.