“Mr. Collins?” Gretchen softly spoke, poking her blonde head in between the oak doors leading to my office. “Did you drop off some dry cleaning down the street and forget to tell me about it?”
“No,” I replied, “my latest load went to that place on Georgetown Pike in Great Falls.”
“Okay,” she shrugged, “I don’t know what, then. There’s this Korean guy named Kim who says he wants to talk to you.”
“Kim?” I asked, somewhat nonplussed.
“Yeah, Kim,” she sighed. “Seriously, are there any Koreans who aren’t named ‘Kim,’ Mr. Collins?”
“A few,” I allowed. “Not too many, though. Is that all he said?”
“Well,” she fretted, intently consulting a note pad, “not much more. He just told me to tell you he’s Kim Jong Un, and it’s urgent.”
“Oh, that Kim!” I exclaimed. “Put him through right away on Line Two!”
Tom: Fond greetings in the name of the People’s Democratic Socialist Revolution, Great Successor.
Kim: Uh, thanks. Is this Tom Collins?
Tom: Yes it is. How may I help you?
Kim: All right – for starters, why don’t you tell me how to get better sound quality out of this damn satellite telephone? You sound like you’re talking to me through a drain pipe!
Tom: Considering how circuitous a circuit between Pyongyang and Washington DC must be, that could be quite a technical challenge. I might suggest, however, that if any part of our connection is being routed as digital information through Russia, China, Sri Lanka, Mongolia, Bulgaria, Ukraine, Poland, Portugal, Vietnam, the Philippines, Morocco, or some place like that, whoever is listening in on us there should switch from whatever primitive lossy audio codec they’re using to an adaptive multi-rate algorithm and increase the available allocated bandwidth so as to reduce this obviously ridiculous compression ratio they have, because there are probably more spooks leaching off this signal than ticks on an Alabama coon hound, and they need to learn how to share, otherwise, if they don’t, then nobody will…
Kim: Okay, okay… that’s better. Now I can hear you just fine.
Tom: Good. What can I do for you, Light of the People, Inspiration of the Workers, Infallible Leader of the Political Cadres…
Kim: First of all, you can stop using all those silly honorifics. It’s embarrassing, frankly. Call me “J.T.,” okay?
Tom: J.T.?
Kim: Yeah, it stands for “John Thomas.” That’s my nickname. I got it at boarding school in Switzerland. There was a British kid there – his father’s an oil executive. I mentioned I wanted an American nickname and he thought it up.
Tom: An English kid suggested you call yourself “John Thomas?”
Kim: Right. Nice, huh? “J.T.” Sounds really American, don’t you think? And “J.T. Ice Trey” – “Trey,” like in “three” – three times the ice, see? That’s my hip-hop rapper name.
Tom: Ah, yes – “John Thomas.” Very appropriate.
Kim: Thanks.
Tom: So what can I do for you, J.T.?
Kim: Well, it’s about how, now that my Dad’s dead…
Tom: Please accept my sincere condolences, J.T., on the untimely passing of your dear father.
Kim: Oh, no need to get all mushy. He could be a real [expletive] hole when he felt like it – everybody knows that. But now that he’s gone, it’s up to me.
Tom: You’re his youngest son, though, aren’t you?
Kim: Yeah.
Tom: Given Asian tradition in general and Korean society in particular, isn’t that a bit… unusual?
Kim: Well, okay, I guess so. At first, Dad wanted my oldest brother, Kim Jong Nam, to succeed him. But then, back in 2001, Jong Nam tried to secretly leave North Korea and sneak into Japan, to… er… um…
Tom: Visit Disneyland?
Kim: Yeah. It was then that Dad decided Jong Nam might lack the… ah, necessary mental capacity… to lead North Korea.
Tom: I see. And is it true what your father’s personal sushi chef wrote about your other older brother, Kim Jong Chul?
Kim: Uh-huh. My father always considered him to be… too… ah… effeminate to inspire confidence in men as a leader. He… uh… likes to wear kimonos… and makeup… and, well, you know… that kind of thing. So anyway, now that Dad’s dead, I’m supposed to take over.
Tom: That seems to be the conventional wisdom.
Kim: And I figured I’m going to need some pretty good advice if I have to do that, so I decided I’d better call you.
Tom: Sure, J.T. Mind if I ask where you heard about me?
Kim: Not at all. I got your number from Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.
Tom: Really? I must remember to thank him for the referral. Glad I can help. Okay then, what, specifically, are your reservations about assuming the reins of power in North Korea?
Kim: Um… well, I’m not exactly sure if I’m… oh, I donno… cut out for the job, you know?
Tom: Understood. So – what would you rather do instead of run North Korea?
Kim: Ah… er… lots of stuff, I guess.
Tom: Like what?
Kim: Uh… dance.
Tom: Dance? I suppose it’s as they say – the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. You’re father was also very fond of dancing. But that didn’t keep him from effectively performing his duties as a Communist dictator, now did it?
Kim: Dad was crazy about ballroom dancing.
Tom: And you…
Kim: Tap, jazz and… ballet.
Tom: Okay, well, there’s no reason why you couldn’t do that if you were absolute ruler of North Korea.
Kim: Look, Tom, my father had to kidnap dance partners from South Korea and keep them captive in Pyongyang. That’s fine if you only need two or three people. But what am I supposed to do – kidnap the entire Seoul Ballet Theatre?
Tom: Good point. But remember that your father was a big movie fan, too. Do you recall what he did when he wanted to produce his own motion pictures? He kidnapped a director and star actress from South Korea, then he got everything else he needed from North Korea. Maybe you could use a business model like that and…
Kim: You’re overlooking one very important thing!
Tom: What’s that?
Kim: All my father’s movies stink!
Tom: Ah…
Kim: They stink out loud in living Technicolor…
Tom: … um…
Kim: … and high-fidelity stereophonic sound!
Tom: … yes, well, there is that.
Kim: And do you know why they stink?
Tom: Because they were produced at North Korean movie studios, with North Korean camera operators, North Korean set designers, North Korean cinematographers, North Korean best boys…
Kim: Right! And anything I would try to do with ballet, jazz or tap in North Korea would stink out loud, too, for the very same reasons! I mean, suppose I wanted to do Billy Elliot – The Musical, for instance. Can you imagine what that would look like in a North Korean production?
Tom: Hmmm… yeah, that is pretty disturbing to visualize.
Kim: No [expletive]! And what about basketball?
Tom: You… want to play basketball?
Kim: No, no, of course not! I’m too short! I want to own a basketball team! But can you picture what owning a North Korean basketball team would be like – how it would look, how it would play, how it would get beat all the time? And who would it play against, anyhow?
Tom: Well, if you’re total dictator, you could start a national North Korean basketball league with the hoops set at eight feet high instead of ten. And you could order everybody to play basketball, and you could command them all to be damn good at it, too, or else get shot by a firing squad.
Kim: Huh… yeah… I guess I could.
Tom: You could order everybody to learn dancing, too, and kidnap South Korean stage managers, choreographers and costumers…
Kim: Yeah, yeah, okay… but even if I am the absolute, maximum leader, I still have to think about the Party and the Army, you know. Even though I theoretically have complete power over everyone in North Korea, there are still limits. I couldn’t order everybody to eat grass and tree bark, for instance.
Tom: But aren’t most North Koreans already living off a diet of grass and tree bark?
Kim: Oh, yeah, that’s right, they are. Okay, then. But even I couldn’t order everybody in North Korea to run around naked, now could I?
Tom: Ah… I suppose not.
Kim: No, I couldn’t – the Party and the Army would step in and see that it didn’t happen, because if it did, North Korea would become a pathetic international laughingstock.
Tom: But isn’t…
Kim: What?
Tom: Uh… never mind, I see your point. So the essential question is, would the Party and/or the Army see any difference between you ordering everyone in North Korea to learn how to tap dance and you ordering everyone in North Korea to run around naked?
Kim: Right, and what I’m afraid of is, they wouldn’t see any difference at all – and the same thing for ordering everybody in North Korea to play basketball. I’m afraid they’d think my Western education has corrupted and poisoned me with bourgeois capitalist values or something.
Tom: But aren’t those officials in the Party and the Army the same people who covet thirty year old French cognac, hand rolled Cuban cigars, Japanese Kobe beef and Iranian caviar?
Kim: Yeah.
Tom: And the difference is?
Kim: The difference is that only the Party leaders and the Army officers get the cognac, cigars, beef steaks and caviar, and they are all good Communists and therefore capable of indulging in such things without becoming corrupted. On the other hand, I would be telling everybody in North Korea to start busting dribble penetration pick-and-rolls or turning grand deboulés. If I did that, the Party and the Army would argue that the common proletarian can’t cope with exposure to that kind of stuff without it turning them into mindless hooligans obsessed with owning color televisions, automatic dishwashers and indoor flush toilets.
Tom: In that case, why not consider opening North Korea up to the rest of the world? Then, you could turn Pyongyang into a cultural and sport magnet city with all the dance and basketball you could possibly want, while also providing the masses with color televisions, automatic dishwashers and indoor flush toilets – not to mention food.
Kim: I don’t know; that’s a pretty radical proposal.
Tom: Sure, you might even say it’s – revolutionary, comrade.
Kim: Oh, [expletive]! That damn lieutenant they assigned as my “valet” is at the door! Gotta go!
Tom: No problem, call back whenever you like.
Kim: Okay! ‘Bye!