Funny thing: two journalists who were reportedly working for Current TV are currently facing ten years in prison in North Korea. So why doesn't Current, you know, report something about it?

North Korea does not let in journalists, except for the odd random one with a great cover story. If you're a reporter sneaking in, you better have big time backup. Not, for example, Current TV.

• The broadcast of yesterday's inauguration earned the highest ratings since Reagan took the oath in 1981. Early numbers from Nielsen indicate 29% of US households tuned in. That figure doesn't factor in the people who viewed it online, and the big event in DC yesterday set web traffic records, too. [THR, NYT]
• The Wall Street Journal received a dozen envelopes filled with a mysterious white powder today. [WSJ]
• Maria Bartiromo has signed a new contract with CNBC. [NYP]
• Newsday editor John Mancini has returned to work following a dispute with the paper's owner, Cablevision's Jim Dolan. [Newsday, E&P]
• Clear Channel is laying off 9% of its work force. [AdAge]
• People pushed back its Tuesday afternoon deadline to Wednesday so it could publish a special double issue with Obama on the cover. [WWD]
• North Korea's news agency didn't bother to report the inauguration until late yesterday afternoon. The article was three sentences long. [FB]

Drudge just linked to this video with the headline "Obama Kids Sing for Dear Leader." See how many seconds it takes you to throw up lunch! Produced by something called Sing For Change, it depicts a group of 5-12-year-olds singing a song about their favorite presidential candidate. "Light, hope, courage and love shine through these non-voting children who believe that their very best contribution to the Obama campaign is to sing," reads the website. After the jump, their North Korean counterparts — they are several inches shorter than their South Korean counterparts, you know — sing for their leader, and I rant briefly about What It Means.

Earlier this week, Gawker explained how to infiltrate the magical fairy tale world of North Korea. (Hint: It's inside the wardrobe.) It turns out that this post was so service-y that an impressionable young college student immediately went out and did it! (Why else would he go there?) He even filed his report already for the Washington Post and guess what? North Korea is ... awesome!Yale senior Jerry Guo actually rode into town on the backs of some Chinese tourists and they all had a blast. Instead of goose stepping soldiers, they find a casino! Black market shopping! A statue of Kim Il Sung that everyone—including non-citizens—have to genuflect to! Their hotel is on an island known as the "Alcatraz of Fun." What's not to love? Sure, no one has seen the Dear Leader in weeks or has any idea if he's even awake. And yes, Jerry did get detained by the secret police for six hours and was also placed under surveillance simply for taking a picture, but you seriously have to see this place!

It is not easy to get news out of the North Koreans. It took the CIA to basically break the story of Kim Jong-Il's stroke; as an expert pointed out in today's Washington Post: "We don't know diddly about what is going on inside that closed country."* But it turns out Kim Jong-Il likes publicity! "I know I'm an object of criticism in the world," he told Madeline Albright one time. "But if I'm being talked about, I must be doing the right things." (Hey, think we've identified Spencer Pratt's PR role model??) Anyway, every year the hermit kingdom invites a few journalists to bask in its glorious spectacle of self-reliance, and every year we read the resulting works of journalism and think "Well who in the name of Engels let that guy in?" After the jump, find out how the likes of Parade, Vice and a random graphic novelist infiltrated the Stalinist hermit state.

The L.A. Times is cutting 250 jobs, the Tampa-Tribune is cutting 21, the New York Times is now available only on Kindle during a lunar eclipse, but all is well in dead-tree medialand — in Korea. An anti-Communist group in Seoul plans to distribute 100,000 free copies of its newspaper to North Korean readers via balloons. The so-called Free North Korea Shinmun "will expose and condemn human rights violations in the communist country with articles written by North Korean defectors living in the South." The good news? The paper's made of plastic, so less atmospheric wear and tear. The bad? There's no food supplement made of real food to actually be use to North Koreans.

It may be impolite and insensitive to probe the arts-and-leisure scene in war-torn Iraq, but there's no reason to think that the other segments of the Axis of Evil can't play the frivolous-amusements game with the best of 'em. Not only does suave sex kitten Mahmoud Ahmadinejad maintain a blog (infrequently updated but RSS-equipped); the Democratic People's Republic of Korea—"North Korea" to the capitalist running dogs—runs a charmingly Web 1.0 official news site off a Japanese server. And it even updates on the weekends!