Critical support to the nation of Kiribati for gouging techbros who want to squat on their digital domain space, I suppose, but I deserve something affordable, dammit! 
I think it's good policy that they charge local residents considerably less, but $200 is still way too much.
I wonder if it's possible to get WHOIS privacy for a .ki TLD. Maybe that would be a bad idea (because it's so high value).
Edit: A $1000 one-time fee would be somewhat understandable but $1000/yr is outrageous. No wonder they have so many single letter domain names available.
I own a few com/net domains from Namecheap already. The .ki is for a short domain (like bit.ly or flic.kr) that would be badass. But the tech sultans of Kiribati are pricing me out!
short domains are stupid anyways, the dot is supposed to be an organizational thing, not just a cute separator
But they look so pretty and are easy to type!
I was going to use it for permashortlinks that complement a longer canonical domain.