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.
.com/.net/.org are probably the cheapest you will get. Websites like Namecheap will give you a good deal for the first year on a lot of TLDs, but renewals after that first year go back to their "retail" price and it ends up being something absurd like $30/year. .com/.net/.org are always around $9-10/year even after the first year.
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.
just double checked. shrekland.net still up and running
I'm still mad someone else snatched http://lib.rehab first. It was taken only recently.