Comrades,
The murky worlds of International Diplomacy and the Miracle of Democracy rarely collide, but when K-Pop proved to be an overnight smash-hit sensation in Pyongyang, there's populism right there.
I'm voting for Red Velvet, the most popular all-girl band in all of South Korea at the minute - who would win the Eurovision Song Contest in a canter, if they were allowed in.
They were among the 120 strong troupe of performers and 70 roadies who made the 'soft diplomacy' tour; the South even sent 68-year-old crooner Cho Yong-pil to belt out his classic "Dear Friend" and the 61-year-old 'balladeer' Choi Jin-hee to crank up a rendition of one of Fat Boy's father's favourites "Maze of Love".
Fatboy himself was seen bopping along with the best of them as he took front and centre in a private box at the magnificently ornate post-Stalinist 1,500-seat East Pyongyang Grand Theater [which was nationally televised - of course], before the South Korean artistes went around again a couple of days later for 12,000 of the party faithful at the Ryugyong Jong Ju Yong Gymnasium.
Of course "Little Bomb Man" doesn't have any particular gripe with the South, evinced by the fact that he his due to have a face-to-face chit-chat with South Korean Presdt. Moon in the DMZ on 27 April.
He just hates America with a passion that knows no bounds, and is now taking full advantage of the chaotic chronic dysfunction in the White House to push his own wheelbarrow.
And everybody knows He's Got The Bomb in his push-cart.
Rapprochement, however, continues on unabated, as Fat Boy also felt obliged to drop in on his major sponsors in Beijing to make tribute, and didn't Pres. Mr Ping of China roll out the exceedingly long red carpet for him?.
Kim Jnr Jnr travelled in the famous British Racing Green Train which has been used by the Kim family dynasty for decades [and probably still runs behind a thumping great steam locomotive].and it was by all reports a very slow train to China indeed, with all that armour-plating on the carriages - 21 cars in total in the set - that travelled the roughly 1,100 km from Pyongyang to Beijing, and there are plenty of tracks going this way and that, so nobody is entirely sure which route the lavishly appointed choo-choo took, except for the Chinese signallers, and they aint talkin'.
They can hear the whistle blowin'.
One of the carriages was reported to be filled entirely with wine.
Now this is a good move as the Chinese are just mad for red, very good red, particularly Bordeaux, so the container car was likely stacked to the brim with cases of Château Lafite Rothschild and a bit of Vintage Champagne Krug as fruit for the sideboard, as French winemakers deny any knowledge of international trade sanctions and are not at all fussy about who they sell their booze to - there is no bargaining, just pay up front, in cash, preferably in Francs.
Fatboy would never in his wildest dreams consider getting on a little airplane to go anywhere [up until this point he hadn't left North Korea for seven years].
As soon as it departed North Korean airspace a guided missile could loom up out of no-where and poof! he turns into a an exploding fireball of flaming wreckage never to be seen again.
He's smarter than that and he's not having it, and he certainly won't be turning up in Washington DC in the foreseeable future, so The Donald will just have to lose face and go to China - again - where the POTUS is currently on the nose.
Mmm... The DJ! could be caught between a rock and a hard place there if he wants to go half way around the world to hook up with Kim.
meantime, it's been all fun and games over in Moscow, since that most unfortunate incident in Salisbury, involving a hitherto unknown minor double-agent by the name of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia, who got caught up as collateral damage.
Just to remind you, here's Ol' Skrippers - as he's known in British intelligence circles - and his offspring in happier times.
The KGB has form the length of yr arm when it comes to sneaky poisonings - it's their signature calling card - unlike Mossad, who prefer strangulation.
And this Novichok gear is an absolute ripper if you seriously want to dispatch yr enemies as it produces "involuntary contraction of all skeletal muscles that leads to respiratory and cardiac arrest and finally death from heart failure or suffocation as copious fluid secretions fill the victims' lungs".
Ouch.
I see that My Mate Vlad has for the first time come out via his Ambassador at the UN and publicly claimed what he's been telling the Russian populace all along in the lead up to his "re-election"..."This is crazy. We are accused of doing it? Nonsense. In the week before my Presidential Election? Impossible. It was a botched job! We don't do failure. It was MI5 who did it. They're bloody hopeless if they want the world to believe that I am the bad dude in this one. Nichto to do with me".
The Kremlin double-crosses the double-agent, eh, Putes?
Cute.
Regulation diplomatic expulsions are par for the course in such times.
Crikey, even Australia as a token in the game, chucked out two "Russian spies" and Our Julie Bishop said in a doorstop interview that "Russia has not been playing by the rules" - this in the same week as the Australian cricket team had been caught "not playing by the rules".
That is a touch harsh, as the recently former and current Australian XI does not contain any well-trained killers in the poisoning caper as far as I am aware.
In any case, word is that the only thing that the Canberra Diplomatic Corps wanted to chin-wag to Ms Bishop about over cocktails at the time was, you guessed it - the cricket - so I suppose you could put that down in the book as a "diplomatic incident" as well.
Gee, I almost forgot to explain why the Trumpotus' name is stinking mud in Peking at the minute.
It's because the Deranged American is in the middle of kicking off a Trade War with China.
He's not listening.
He never listens, so he never learns, that is if he is capable of learning, having never read a book.
The learned White House advisers might as well be invisible ghosts in the walls.
The carrot-topped loose cannon does not know that age old maxim that goes way back to the First Opium War [1839-42] that "no-one wins in a Trade War".
They had to have a Second Opium War to sort it out, as the outcome of stoush No.1, a peace treaty, left no-one satisfied.
There are a million ways to start a war, but only two ways to finish one - annihilate your enemy, or take all yr chips to the bargaining table at the Peace Conference.
Put in simple terms, the American economy will finish up in tatters and it will all end in tears.
The Chinese hold the whip hand here as they'll just flood the world with their excess produce at near or below cost-price, and all those economies will then go belly up as folks rush out to grab the super-cheap Chinese goods sending local companies to the wall, forget wage growth - all the jobs disappear - and financial markets go into nuclear melt-down GFC-style, and hello here comes a depression or something similarly appalling.
You know it makes sense.
Good luck with picking the next Boom Time.
Never mind the stupendous Mexico Wall insanity or the foolhardy idea of sending in the Texas National Guard with big shooters to keep the brown scum out, if any further evidence is required that The Donald is as mad as a cut snake, then surely, this must be it.
[China Daily/Li Feng]
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