Earlier this month, Philip Morris became the first foreign tobacco company to begin cigarette output in South Korea, the eighth-largest cigarette market worldwide, where more than a quarter of the population is addicted to nicotine. North Korean nukes? We'll show that pesky Kim Jong Il how to really get people breathing hard on the Korean Peninsula. Philip Morris also said that it's keen to purchase Serbia's largest tobacco plant when it gets privatized next year. The company should feel right at home in the Balkans, where killing off local residents has been something of a pastime for years. I know I sound cranky on this issue. But it never ceases to amaze me how an industry that massacres its customers so freely -- 5 million deaths a year, according to the World Health Organization -- can profit so handsomely from trafficking in a deadly, highly addictive drug.