Burke’s Peerage Pyongyang Edition

Korean Central News Agency, via Reuters

Kim Jong-un the son of Kim Jong-il and grandson of Kim Il-sung and newly appointed successor to the North Korean leadership (his stepbrother Kim Jong-nam was passed over when he was caught trying to visit Tokyo’s Disney World), may have learned some lessons from Fiorello Laguardia, the legendary mayor of New York who read comics to children over the radio during a time when his country, like North Korea, was under fire (and to whom Kim Jong-un, also pudgy and diminutive bears a slight resemblance). Like his ill-fated stepbrother, Kim Jong-un also likes Disney, but he expropriated Disney characters to curry popular support and also undoubtedly to cheer up Pyongyangians the way Laguardia once lifted the spirits of New Yorkers. Jong-un also got hooked up according to a front page piece in the Times (“That Mystery Woman in North Korea? Turns Out She’s First Lady,” NYT, 7/25/12).  Ri Sol-ju is the lucky young lady and what better morale builder could the young leader have, particularly in the light of his last failed rocket launch, which has caused some commentators to question his virility (“North Korea’s Performance Anxiety,” NYT, 5/5/12)? Sol-ju according to the Times was spotted wearing “a trim black suit in the Chanel tradition” and she showed up at “the inauguration of an amusement park” in a “fashionable polka-dot jacket.” The Times piece cites “analysts” who claim that “Ms. Ri’s fashion sense…appears to be part of the building of a youthful new image; for years North Korean women were pictured only in traditional billowing dresses or Mao-style work clothes.” Sound like the difference between Mamie Eisenhower and Jackie Kennedy? In any case, the marriage naturally makes one think about the next heir to the dynasty and what his name will be. First name has to be Kim, but after that all bets are off. If you take the “un” literally, the dauphin could be Kim Jong-deux. There is no doubt that the prospect of a new heir is a naming opportunity which could bring needed revenue into coffers of the impoverished country. For instance someone like the hedge fund operator Boaz Weinstein, who held the profitable side of the infamous London Whale, might prefer to have a child named after him rather than a hospital wing. Kim Jong-Weinstein? It’s sonorous enough, but might be too Jewish sounding for a future leader of the DPRK (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea).

Mickey Mouse Politics

                                  Korea Central News Agency via Reuters

Will Disney fare any better with the North Koreans then Yukia Amana and the IAEA or or even the U.S. Government? After the failure of their most recent rocket, they launched a series of Disney characters on Pyongyang television. Obviously the Disney Company owns the copyright to these creations, but the question is, how versed is the current regime in intellectual property law?  In a piece entitled “On North Korean TV, a Dash of (Unapproved) Disney Magic” (NYT, 7/9/12), The Times reported that “North Korean state-run television on Monday showed footage of costumed versions of Tigger, Minnie Mouse and other Disney characters prancing in front of the leader, Kim Jong-un, and an entourage of clapping generals. The footage also showed Mr. Kim in a black Mao suit watching as Mickey Mouse conducted a group of young women playing violins in skimpy black dresses.” If Disney does file suit against the North Koreans for copyright infringement, the question is, what tact will lawyers for the youthful leader Kim Jong-un take? Will the North’s legal team argue that the use of the characters and scenes from movies like Dumbo and Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs was an example of the kind of appropriation practiced by graphic artists like Shepard Fairey? Will the Disney citations be considered “fair use” under copyright law or part of a mise-en-scene that was justified as an admiring critique of American society? North Korean politics works in furtive ways and the whole Disney affair may go back to an earlier diplomatic incident involving Disney. As the Times piece pointed out Kim Jong-un has an older half brother Kim Jong-nam who got into big trouble with the folks back home when he tried to sneak into Tokyo’s Disney World on a Dominican passport.

Success and Succession

Determining the order of succession in the new secretive North Korean government of Kim Jong-un, the son of the recently deceased Kim Jong-il is as difficult as discovering the elusive Higgs Boson. As you may recall the Higgs Boson is the tiny particle that scientists have been seeking out for over 40 years. Recently, teams of particle physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider near Geneva discovered some very encouraging results which would as Columbia physicist Brian Greene recently said in a Times Op-Ed piece, “complete an essential chapter in our quest to understand the basic components of the universe.” (“Waiting for the Higgs Particle, NYT, 12/14/11). So little in fact is known about the North Korean leadership that like understanding the Higgs particle, it would involve in Greene’s words “a rewriting of the very definition of nothingness.” One other thing that the North Korean leadership has in common with the Higgs particle is that any sightings tend to be short-lived. “Finding this particle would be no easy task,” Greene went on to comment. “The Higgs particle would be short-lived, quickly decaying into other, more familiar particles.” Doesn’t that too seem the problem when it comes to determining the ephemeral coterie of officials surrounding around both Kim Jong-il and his anointed successor Kim Jong-un. “Identifying the mourners and absentees in the world’s most closed society is one of the few ways available to outsiders trying to solve the mystery of the unfolding succession in Pyongyang,” Choe Sang-Hun said in a recent Times piece (“Buzz Over Who’s Not in the North Korean Picture(s),” NYT, 12/22 /11). Is it too far a stretch  to think that Angela Landsbury could be brought back to reprise the evil mother she played in Manchurian Candidate to play the role of Kim Ok who Choe Sang-Hun described as “one of Jim Jong-il’s closest aides.” According to Sang-Hun, Kim Jong-un  is “the second son of Kim Jong-il’s third wife” and Kim Ok is now serving “as the North’s de facto first lady since Kim Jong-un’s mother died  in 2004.” Yes we are going from West to East from the extreme right to the extreme left (and beyond), but in our quantum universe where a particle can be in two different places at the same time, nothing is surprising. Lawrence Harvey played Landsbury’s son (Raymond Shaw) in Manchurian Candidate and if he were alive, he would have been the perfect person to play the role of the handsome but baffled looking Kim Jong-un, whose mother Ko Young-hee was a prominent North Korea Opera star. The wild card according to Sang-Hun’s story is Kim Jong-nam (no relation to Viet), the hapless oldest son of Kim Jon-il and the product of KJi's marriage to his first wife who “fell out of favor and was alone in Moscow when she died.” Sang-Hun reports that there were rumors Ko Young-hee, the opera star, had been behind a plot to assassinate Kim Jong-nam who “now lives in effective exile in the Chinese gambling enclave of Macao.” Hopefully, by the time the existence of the Higgs Boson is finally confirmed, more will be revealed about who’s who in Pyongyang.