So Donald Trump and Emmanuel Macron fall in love and refuse to be physically separated ever again, “je t’aime, Don-ald”, “lovin’ you too, Manu”, (hugs, kisses, tongues, holding hands, stroking thighs…) where’s the fucking sick-bag???

Then follows the inevitable cheap, far-eastern rip-off copy as Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in get overly pally on the north/south border in Korea. And although somewhat derivative, this bromance is in fact way more significant in geo-political terms, if not relating to peace emerging in one very highly inflamed region of our planet. Possibly.

Because you mustn’t start counting your chicken chou meins before they’re wokked, there are precedents for apparent accords between South Korea and the reigning Kim. Lots of precedents. Which last, on average, about 10 minutes before hostility and aggression breaks out once more.

Trump has already, with feigned modesty, decided to accept full credit for this olive branch from the world’s most hostile nation to its neighbours. But Trump would. Yet I think that the main significance is that the man in charge of North Korea is in possession of the one and only fat belly in his nation. Because everyone else there is starving. And personally I think this striving for ‘peace with our brothers and neighbours to the South’ is out of sheer economic desperation and necessity.

JEREMY CORBYN/JOHN MCDONNELL TAKE CAREFUL NOTE OF THE FOLLOWING!

North Korea has a population of 25 million (yes, who all look, pretty much the same). South Korea has double, 50 mil. Who also all look remarkably similar. North Korea, which is run as set up by Kim the grandfather, on a Leninist-Marxist model, has a GDP of $40billion a year. Whereas free market friend-of-the-west and manufacturer-of-my-phone-and-tv South Korea generates $2.17TRILLION a year. 500 times more. Though this in part is due to the massive military and army expenditure that the paranoid little Elvis-impersonator feels he has to maintain and that he possibly wouldn’t need if he was allied to the south.

But its the money. North Korea is cut off financially from the whole world except for China. Though granted, China is a pretty big ‘except’. And Kim’s land is all but bankrupt. It can’t feed its people, it can’t trade meaningfully and it struggles to produce anything worthwhile as you can’t market ‘hatred’ and ‘fear’ in world trade. So aligning with its brothers (and they really are, historically and totally) to the south would open up, quite literally, the whole world to them.

So yes, Trump may have been a bit of a catalyst in the game of big talk, but it may have just precipitated Kim’s realisation that the answer to so many of his problems sits so much closer to home.

Peaceful Saturday

A xxxx