It's All About Rice Cookers 2008-06-03 Never mind that state media still demonize anything marginally capitalist. In North Korea, nothing shouts "status" like a smuggled kitchen appliance. RFA photo Cuckoo rice cooker, Seoul. SEOUL—In tightly closed, pathologically secretive North Korea, nothing says “status” in 2008 like a smuggled South Korean rice cooker. And it seems even cadres in one of the world's last bastions of communism have developed a preference for high-end brands. The most popular rice cooker in affluent, arch-rival South Korea is the Cuckoo, a Korean homonym for the sound of steam escaping from a pressure valve...