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Stoopid Idea of the Week

A talentless buffoon named Peter Carlson wants to share his epiphany with us:

I’ve got a better idea: Obama should invite Kim to the United States and let him wander around for a couple of weeks, sipping cocktails with capitalists, visiting a home economics class in Iowa and mingling with Hollywood stars.

Fifty years ago, in similar circumstances, that’s what President Dwight D. Eisenhower did. And it worked, sort of. [Peter Carlson, Washington Post]

An equally sensible idea would be to reform a pedophile by inviting him to a strip club instead of maximum security.  Clearly, someone who lives in this house will not envy our standards of living; someone who keeps this movie collection will not be transformed by exposure to the liberalizing influence of our culture; and someone who keeps his people this isolated will not be forced into perestroika when he loses the next Great Kitchen Debate (as if North Koreans would be allowed to watch it all live on CNN).

There are two ways to read Mr. Carlson’s piece — as a serious proposal, or as a feeble mockery meant to trivialize the very real horror that Kim Jong Il has made of North Korea.  Whichever interpretation you choose, Carlson reveals no thought, reasoning, or writing skill that merits ink in the Washington Post.

7 Responses

  1. The Kims are more self-aware than the Soviets were. NK has had a capitalist doppelganger for the 60 years of its existence, and the Kims have never had to leave the country to understand what a capitalist Korea would look like, nor have they ever shied away from doing the opposite of what they tell their people.

    I read the piece more as a reminiscence of a strange cold-war episode than a serious suggestion for the present.

  2. You might think the idea is stupid, but something similar almost happened back in January:

    Reports: North Korea wants to send nuclear envoy to Obama’s inauguration
    January 12, 2009

    http://abcnews.go.com/International/WireStory?id=6625381&page=1

    North Korea wants to send its chief nuclear envoy to President-elect Barack Obama’s inauguration but Washington rejected the idea, news reports said.

    North Korea, which does not have diplomatic relations with the U.S., proposed sending Vice Foreign Minister Kim Kye Gwan to Obama’s Jan. 20 inauguration. The JoongAng Ilbo newspaper, quoting a Seoul government source, said the communist state may be trying to assess whether its traditional enemy’s policy will change under Obama, who takes office on January 20.

  3. Spelunker, inviting KJI to tour the US is not at all similar to accepting NK’s offer to send its nuclear envoy to Obama’s inauguration.
    A similar occurrence to the Kim Gye Gwan offer would be if Bosworth offered to attend celebrations for NK’s recent parliamentary elections. Another vaguely similar event would be to offer to send Bosworth to Pyongyang right now, but we know that the administration has stated that it’s not the right time.

    Also, if I were to make a historical comparison, I would say that current events most resemble the Cuban missile crisis (Soviet proliferation and nuclear threat) and not the Eisenhower administration.

    While I appreciate Carlson’s desire to incorporate lessons from the Cold War, this simply does not apply for NK (though I would be interested in hearing a similar argument for inviting Premier Wen Jiaobao to the US).

  4. Certainly elements from Carlson’s crazy ideas could have been incorporated into a week long stay for North Korea’s nuclear envoy (NBA game, Chicago pizza, Mount Rushmore) after Obama’s inauguration. I am merely suggesting that if America had accepted North Korea’s chief nuclear envoy Kim Gye Gwan’s offer and made the most of it, then perhaps recent events may not have unfolded as they have unfortunately developed. For example, we would have had an alternative Kim in Pyongyang to talk to as soon as Laura and Euna were captured. I bet Hillary wishes she had that guy’s business card right now.
    It certainly is an extremely rare occasion that Pyongyang offers to send one of their own to the United States, so maybe America should have thought twice about rejecting him.
    After all, don’t you think it would have been cute to see Stephen Bosworth and Kim Gye Gwan shake hands at halftime of the Wizards-Suns game on January 26?

  5. Carlson has no idea about Kim or North Korea and doesn’t try very had to hide it. About 70 percent of the article was about Khrushchev’s visit more than 50 years ago––not NK. I wonder why that is:

    Peter Carlson, a former reporter for The Washington Post, is the author of “K Blows Top: A Cold War Comic Interlude, Starring Nikita Khrushchev, America’s Most Unlikely Tourist.”

    The book was published last week. Handy timing that NK flared up in the news–especially when your publicist can’t book you on the Daily Show

  6. You may be right, but history says otherwise.

    Negotiations inevitably collapsed in late 2008 because of two main reasons: 1) While North Korea gained concessions in fuel aid, NK failed to abide by any of the items of the Feb. 13, 2007 agreement (including failure to disclose its HEU program, which they just admitted to). 2) Revelations of North Korea’s proliferation and counterfeiting activity during the whole course of the denuclearization talks.

    Almost a decade of engagement has given South Korea dozens of North Korean contacts…now they have a dead citizen from the Geumgang Mountain Resort, another abducted man at Kaesong, and NK is demanding beyond-ridiculous rent and wages at Kaesong.

    Would Kim Gye Gwan’s visit to Obama’s inauguration really have changed all of that? But hey, maybe we can send Loren Maazel to talk to his buddies in Pyongyang.

    Further, the Obama administration was right not to accept North Korea’s offer. It would have been inappropriate to accept the offer because the administration was still formulating its North Korea policy. We still don’t have an Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs. Bosworth was appointed weeks later.

  7. North Korea acts and thinks spur of the moment. Emotional and without rational thought until they calculate an agenda which they expect all to follow in order to deal with them. Asking to send an envoy to the inaugaration proved just how irrational and quick mood changing the north koreans are. Considering how mood changing their southern kin can get, north Koreans are like walking ticking time bombs filled with rage that cannot be deciphered nor explained. You never know when their “Han” will take over force them into another rash act.