Kim Jong-un and Me by Bill Kirton

At last, the breakthrough! After all these years of writing all sorts of things, fame and riches are within reach. All I have to do is play my cards right and undertake an admittedly tricky piece of international diplomacy.

Let’s get the facts straight first. Kim Jong-un is a very nice man, a very nice man indeed. Yes, yes, we all know he’s First Secretary of the Workers’ Party of Korea, Supreme Commander of the Korean People’s Army, Supreme Leader, blah, blah, blah but I’m betting he’s basically a very thoughtful, caring individual who has his nation’s welfare, progress and general well-being at heart. You don’t get to be a top political leader of any of the world’s great powers or even of the minor ones, such as the United Kingdom, unless you’re a really nice guy. And, I repeat, Kim Jong-un, or KJ as I intend to call him from now on, is a very, very nice man.

He’s also the world’s youngest head of state and his youth is part of the reason I want so much to get to know him better. He was actually educated in Switzerland and his classmates there said he was a bit shy. But he was a good student and got on well with others. He was ambitious, enjoyed playing basketball and, like most students who know that education’s only a pretence for having a good time, he wasn’t all that meticulous about attendance and his grades suffered as a result. (These indisputable facts are essential to an understanding of my thesis and, needless to say, I owe them all to Wikipedia.)

But from those inauspicious, even mundane beginnings, he has progressed to a condition described by the Korean Central News Agency as ‘a great person born of heaven’ and inspired the ruling Workers' Party to declare in an editorial, ‘We vow with bleeding tears to call Kim Jong-un our supreme commander, our leader’. (NOTE. ‘Bleeding’ in this context is not the same as its usage in such English expressions as ‘Oi, mate, what’s the bleedin game then? Leave it out, you bleedin tosser.’)

So where does KJ fit into my own plan for JK Rowling-style world domination? The answer’s easy. I ask you to picture one of those gatherings where thousands of those present and many millions watching on TV weep and wail and gnash simply because KJ exists and is among them. He has only to raise his hand for a silence to fall on the multitude (broken only by suppressed sobs of ineluctable joy), he has only to take one step and they will follow, however deep the abyss towards which he leads them.

Now I ask you to add just one element, one gesture and two words to the scene. In his hand he holds a book. He raises it for them to see and says just two words, ‘Buy this’. The resultant KJ-provoked sales would make JK look like a no-hoper. And that will be the effect of my diplomatic endeavours because recently, to my great surprise, I received two copies of one of my non-fiction books, Brilliant Study Skills, IN KOREAN! The attached illustrations are proof of its existence, and I’m hoping the one with the blurb about me conveys the fact that I am one of KJ’s greatest fans.

On the other hand (and this is where the tricky diplomacy comes in), I must be careful not to alienate South Korea and it may be that I have to indulge in a wee apostasy, denounce my erstwhile mate, KJ, and cut my losses because the population of South Korea is twice that of the North.

Democracy can be annoying at times.