The Roh 'n Kim show part VIII: Malice in Wonderland

Quite apart from the nose-picking incident and the snub and counter-snub of today's summit meeting, the sheer, un-parsable curiosity of this event has been both a joy and a chill to watch. I have not, I think, fallen into the traditional traps when describing North Korea. I don't, for example, share the view of some observers that Kim is "mad".

But a mad-hatter's tea party it certainly is. If craziness could be given a debt-rating, this country would have the triple-A creditworthiness of a Swiss Bank (not UBS, obviously, but you know what I mean).

The visiting South Korean delegation was given wonderful tours through Potemkin Village-type facilities and factories all screaming with economic backwardness and dysfunction. Despair dressed in the sad robes fantasy popped-up at every turn. South Korea's first lady was shown a school room with lipsticked girls chanting a traditional song. It was as heart-breaking as it was sinister.

They later went to a hospital where everyone was wearing clean pyjamas and supposedly being treated for serious, long-term diseases like cancer. One of the bed-ridden in-patients was being treated with a small pyramid of smouldering herbs that was being applied to his tummy. It was strangely nostalgic. My auntie Mona once did that to me when I fell over and grazed my shin - it was during her "homeopathic" phase in the early 1980s. The wound went septic later that weekend and had to be treated with TCP.

But the South gave as good as it got. Not only did the delegation all turn up with its own food - they  actually all ate alone on Tuesday - but they also brought an interesting load of gifts for the Kimster. A case-load of DVDs of a hot South Korean chick the Dear Leader fancies, a home cinema and selection of other clobber. This wasn't real-world diplomacy, where carved wooden heads, traditional sweetmeats and other useless crap changes hands between leaders. This was a rich uncle giving his diabolical little nephew everything on the spoilt tyke's Christmas list.

But the crowning glory of the day was the Arirang festival. A triumph of spectacle over sanity that leaves a somewhat vile taste in the mouth.  Sight-wise, of course, it deserves to be one of the wonders of the world. Morally - and I'm not talking about the brick-handed symbolism here - it should be classed as a crime. Youngsters, I think I can safely say, should be doing more productive things with their time than perfecting the waving of coloured fans and cards in the glorification of a long-dead tyrant and a regime that has literally starved a generation to death.

What was particularly odd about the Arirang though, was its broader appeal to Korean nationalism - the same force whose heart beats so strongly in the South, just twisted hideously around a bankrupt personality cult. There were allegorical parades of Japanese oppressors and refugee Korean villagers. These are sights that, even now, play strangely well in Seoul. As Brian Myers, the expert in DPRK propaganda put it: the DMZ is not a line between communism and capitalism, it's a line between nationalism and rabid ultra-nationalism.

By the way, the glorious presidential arse-grabbing incident described in a previous post has, of course, made its way onto YouTube - you can find it at this link and the atrocity takes place around 1m27 seconds into the clip.

Comments

[James]

Watched the 'arse-grabbing' clip twice and, frankly, if you can see anything untoward happening here, then you probably need to get laid more often.

[abel]

what is more interesting then the arse grabbing, is the way asian diplomats, always look like they came straight out of Hong Kong's Young and Dangerous movies.

O wait, that happens world wide.