The Korean War ended 65 years ago. North versus South. Or, China versus America, as it transpired. The first ‘proxy war’ of our time. And a wonderful precedent it set. Unless you were unfortunate enough to be a Korean, then it was awful. And since then no Westerners have had dealings of any description with North Korea.

Until yesterday. When Man-of-our-Times, Donald J. Trump, met up with His Royal Porkiness, Kim Jong-un, for brunch in Singapore. I don’t know what they ate but I’m guessing there was plenty. And plenty of hand-shaking, photo-opportuning, back-slapping and ‘making nice’.

Trump afterwards announced, in that Trump way, that it had been very productive, very positive, very meaningful, ‘a great meeting’, a ‘tough negotiation’, blah, blah, Trumpety-blah. But he spared the details. Either because he deemed the public unworthy or he didn’t know them himself. Though we learned that Kim promised a de-nuke, though didn’t say when, and was pretty evasive about the extent of the observers and their freedom to investigate, and Donald said he’d stop the ‘war games’ with South Korea which they do every few months to scare Kim. And signatures were flourished. Trump’s in the usual 2-foot high letters and Kim appeared to order a Pad Tai with extra mushrooms, but I could be wrong on that.

Then after the extended congratulatory scenes came the little less comfortable stuff. ‘President Trump; how do you feel negotiating with a man who locks people up without a trial, murders their families and has even locked up most of his own family for decades??’ Good questions. It always gets a bit ‘human rightsy’ when you deal with anyone in the Far East. Mainly because the Chinese character for ‘human rights’ is almost identical to the one for ‘castration without anaesthetic’. Its just a linguistic anomaly.

And then there’s the force of history. North Korea signed a similar agreement in 1993. That was Kim-Jong-whatever at that time, but still it came to nothing and hostilities returned. But we remain hopeful. North Korea more than anyone else need this now. Because the country is broke, starving and the last thing it needs is to piss away another few billion on nuclear weapons. Otherwise, if it hasn’t happened already, North Korea just becomes part of greater China. Would we ever know the difference?

Happy Wednesday

A xxxx