HIGH on the agenda of John Kerry, America’s secretary of state,
as he paid brief visits to Seoul and Beijing this week, was the
perennial headache of how to deal with North Korea. It is
probably small consolation that at least things are not as bad
as they were in 1968. That was the year North Korea seized an
American spy ship, the USS Pueblo, killing one crew member and
torturing the 82 others it held hostage for nearly a year.  A
fine new book, however, “Act of War: Lyndon Johnson, North Korea
and the capture of the spy ship Pueblo”, is a reminder also of
how little fundamental has changed in the North Korean regime
since then. It is still not so much a rogue state as a gangster
one, which maintains its power with unmatched brutality at home
and sets its own rules abroad.  The book, by Jack Cheevers, a
former reporter for the Los Angeles Times, is based on extensive
interviews with the crew and others involved in the disaster and
on newly declassified material. It is in part a painful human
story of the suf