William Norton: Our friends the North Koreans

At times of international tension and crisis it is vitally important that men and women of goodwill do everything in their power to nuke the enemy before they get us to reach out with the hand of friendship to pluck the flower of peace from the nettles of despair.

To help this essential task, Conservative Home presents this cross-cultural, fully-inclusive, non-judgmental, radical, innovative, multimedia, on-line guide to North Korea to explain why there’s really nothing for you to worry about if the world’s last Stalinist regime headed by a paranoid psychotic with a dodgy haircut has now acquired the ability to blow up the planet.

Culture

They go in for singing a lot in North Korea, probably because after finishing their compulsory military training drill there isn’t a fat lot else to do of an evening.  Fortunately, most North Koreans are able to combine their nation’s two legal hobbies at once with plenty of toe-tapping routines from the hit parade – well, just parade, actually: left, right, left, right, look at these plucky little fellows competing in popular local TV show Strictly Come Marching.

The idea has somehow got around that North Korea is cut-off and isolated from the rest of the world.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  As a sign of how open the country is to Western influences – and that it is totally committed to equal rights, even for women – is this picture of its leading recording artist.

Staff Sergeant Nu Claire Win Tah has a new single out, a cover of that old Lulu favourite Boom Bang A Bang.  With a happy, upbeat tempo this is the sort of optimistic smiley music your parents fell in love to.

There’s plenty of eye candy for the ladies, too.  North Korea has several boy bands, the most prominent of which is Take That And That And That. Following certain “musical differences” the remaining survivor at liberty is this young hunk, Brigadier-General Hah Toh Mik Wah Hed.  His latest (and possibly last) hit is an updated version of The Final Countdown.  Rather shorter than the original, I believe.

Politics

As it happens, North Koreans don’t go in for politics much.  Not for them the daily tedium of wading through the predictable same-old same-old postings on Conservative Home where people disagree with the leader!  The whole country is 100% united behind charismatic statesman Kim Jong Il.  Go to Pyongyang and you won’t be able to find a single person prepared to criticise him.

It would be typically arrogant for us, wouldn’t it, in our complacent Western way to dismiss this as backward.  Which of us, trudging back from another disappointing election night count at the town hall, would not envy the record of the Korean Communist Party, who have never lost a vote, ever?  As the official History of Korea website says in regard to the 1947 elections “All the Korean people without exception elected the Great Leader Kim Il Sung as the President” LINK: http://www.korea-dpr.com/history297.htm

CCHQ could surely learn something from the Dear Leader, one feels.  The parallels are closer than you might think.  Any ConHome regular who dislikes the new Oak Tree logo will be reassured to discover that the Torch of Freedom hasn’t been lost forever.  It’s alive and well as the symbol of the mass gymnastics event held to celebrate the 60th birthday of Kim Jong Il.

Is the Tory core vote about to be attacked from the Left?

Foreign Policy

William Hague can rest easy.  North Korea is very proportionate in its use of force.  If you ignore the years 1950 to 1953 then they’ve never attacked anyone at all.  They’ve even made sure that no-one can provoke them into war through kidnapping their soldiers – they have sensibly ringed the entire country with mile-wide minefields patrolled 24/7 by local army groups holding spontaneous choir practices and rifle shooting.  What thoughtful chaps they are.

Immigration

There is no immigration in North Korea.  Nigel Farage MEP will soon be holding a fact-finding mission to consult Kim Jong Il on how he has managed to achieve one of UKIP’s key policy objectives.  An obvious benefit of being Better Off Out of the EU?

Emigration

There is no emigration from North Korea.  They love it so much they simply can’t tear themselves away from the place!  The country is so wonderful in fact that thousands of citizens decide to take extended holidays over several years in specially constructed tourist camps in the scenic uranium and salt-mining districts of the romantic mountainous north east.

Economics

North Korea is a socialist nirvana which has abolished private property and the destructive strife caused by upward mobility.  Adam Smith Institute please note: no unemployment or welfare dependency here.  Millions of people are quite happy to share in the proceeds of growth by working in the fields every hour of the daylight.  What more proof could you want of their social responsibility?  North Koreans are so devoted to the principles of ecology that they have wisely turned their backs on the false glamour of globalisation.  They simply refuse to make anything that anyone else might want to buy.

Cuisine

A lot of lies are told about Korean cuisine, such as the myth that they eat dogs.  This is completely untrue.  The last dog in North Korea died many years ago.  Because they have rejected the wastefulness of capitalist competition, North Koreans enjoy an abundance of the good, simple things in life.  Everyone has as much grass to eat as they want.

Local delicacies include boiled grass, fried grass and raw grass.  Jamie Oliver is rumoured to have drawn inspiration from North Korea for his next TV series on school dinners – and as Boris Johnson will tell you, you can’t argue with that.

Conclusion

Hands off North Korea!  It is a faraway country of which we know nothing, and now is not the time to go blundering in with ignorant neo-con notions of freedom, justice, decency and international security.  The only way to make Kim Jong Il see sense is to give him what he wants.  After all, although Appeasement has a bad name these days, everyone forgets that it successfully delivered peace in 90% of the 1930s.

PS Author’s note.  For anyone curious to know, the pictures above are genuine North Korean items which can be purchased from the Korean Friendship Association (see here or join here).  Hat tip to Fink.

Comments

[Richard]

Coincidently, North Korea's nuclear claims came shortly after I'd been watching Team America: World Police.

Not wishing to use the exact language in that film that describes what should be done to Kim Jong-Il, I shall translate it slightly: We need to shaft this unpleasant person before we all get covered in a very big mess.

[malcolm]

Sounds wonderful William.You've sold it to me.I good do with reducing my diet to grass.

[James Maskell]

Im sold. Im giving my landlord and boss notice...Im off to North Korea! I can be retrained in how to follow Cameron with complete and unwavering support.

Alternatively Jack Stone could start doing lessons on how to do that... (Jack, Im joking)

[Yet Another Anon]

There should be total sanctions on North Korea and perhaps even a blockade, any missiles they fire over neighbouring countries territory and any North Korean aircraft, troops or naval vessels going into territory of neighbours should be destroyed. If it weren't for China being still largely supportive of North Korea and right next to it I would favour regime change by military means using months of intensive bombing (nuclear if neccessary) followed by a mass ground invasion and remove and execute North Korea's leaders and put a new government in place.

[Paul Kennedy]

Great piece.

Unfortunately William, I understand the North Koreans have in fact had to eat both the "flower of peace" and the "nettles of despair" due to their over expenditure on military equipment and no expenditure on tractors and ploughs. ;)

[John]

So importing dogs, could that be a business opportunity?

[Daniel Vince-Archer]

Have the North Korean Public Affairs Committee (UK) called for William to be sacked from his job yet?

No? Just MPAC UK that don't have a sense of humour then?

[John Moss]

The pen, ultimately, will always be mightier than the sword.

I look forward to a Norton piece on how the veil, arranged marriage and the requirement to cook, clean, wash and iron is the ultimate fulfillment for females of the islamic tendency whose parents insisted on them being hot-housed, tutored and force fed the best the British education system could provide.

[Tim Worrall]

I just love that 'Friends' website. Here's a favourite quote:

"Korea is an independent and sovereign state, but the south is still controlled by imperialist interests and the U.S. troops. If any South Korean citizen tries to visit North Korea crossing the big concrete wall, he'll be killed by the American soldiers. The Security Law in South Korea forbides (sic) to any South Korean citizen to talk or read about the North or else he'll be punished with jail or even the death penalty."

Marvellous

[SimonNewman]

"Coincidently, North Korea's nuclear claims came shortly after I'd been watching Team America: World Police"

A strange coincidence - my wife and I also watched Team America on DVD, then woke up next morning to the news of the A-bomb test!