The Safest Dictator in Hong Kong

His real name isn’t Howard—or maybe it is, but he’s not saying. He’s 34, he lives in Hong Kong, and his hobby is wandering the city dressed as Kim Jong-un: hair gelled into that signature architectural mound, face arranged into the supreme leader’s permanent expression of baffled displeasure. It works well enough that strangers stop him constantly for photographs.

The fear is the interesting part. Not paralyzed-scared, but aware-scared—the kind where you know North Korean state security is probably not dispatching a hit squad over a comedy impression on the streets of Hong Kong, but you also know you can’t be completely sure of that. So he keeps his last name to himself and keeps walking around looking like the world’s most overfed dictator, and people keep laughing, and he keeps loving it. Putting fun ahead of fear is a reasonable way to live.