Despite his love of French champagne and Italian sport cars, Kim Jong-il made North Korea an insulated society more committed to guns than butter. Indeed, under Kim, the country aggressively exported advanced missile technologies in defiance of international will.
Kim Jong-il’s love of booze, women and basketball is the least of North Korea’s state secrets. And, if Kim shared his love of sports and glitter with his son, the “great successor,” Kim Jong-un, then an icon-heavy diplomatic mission could prove successful for re-engaging North Korea.
The traditional diplomatic team of a former U.S. president and former secretary of state coupled with cultural icons like Katy Perry and Michael Jordan could offer the most effective mission for the Pyongyang crowd.
Flashy pop culture figures and sports icons may not negotiate an armistice or prevent war, but they could be valuable levers to get top diplomats into the right place at the right time while lowering the stress of high-stakes diplomacy.
During most of Kim’s reign, he focused on cultural affairs with self-aggrandizing themes, rather than driving North Korea into armed conflict. He “wrote books, produced and starred in movies,” Albright writes in her memoir, Madam Secretary, about American impressions. Before her 2000 mission, he “was reputed to be an otherworldly recluse, more interested in making and watching movies than in governing.”
One of the United States’ greatest cultural exports and original California girl Katy Perry could headline a diplomatic team. For years, Kim made the Hermit Kingdom a destination for flashy Western-imitation goods and movies, and no other American-made “product” is as flashy as Katy Perry.
In October 2006, the Union-Tribune’s Mark Zeigler called Kim the “oddest fan” in relation to his love of the NBA. During the Korean missile test crisis, Republican presidential hopeful and then-Sen. Rick Santorum remarked: “Kim doesn’t want to die. He wants to watch NBA basketball.”
At the end of her trip, Albright presented Kim Jong-il with a basketball signed by NBA Superstar, Michael Jordan. The 2011 NBA lockout has taught us that we need to reach back at least that far to anyone in the NBA with diplomatic skills. In addition to Jordan’s skill on the hardwood, he also has some other credits North Korea, namely his acting role in Space Jam.
While Perry and Jordan would be the team’s headliners, the diplomatic core of the team would be Clinton and Albright. Clinton has already demonstrated success in post-presidential negotiating when he secured the release of two American journalists. Albright has recounted the warm welcome given by Kim Jong-il, and notes that had the administration had more time, Clinton may well have met directly with Kim Jong-il.
The key to success in North Korea is time. In 1994, President Clinton sent former President Jimmy Carter to North Korea and Carter was able to establish the first dialogue in forty years. Unfortunately, time ran out on the Clinton administration, but President Barack Obama still has a short timeframe in which to couple diplomatic leaders who made significant headway a decade ago with powerhouse cultural and sports icons that any twenty-something would have to meet.
North Korea’s nuclear weapons, propaganda machine, disregard for embargoes and general disinterest in appropriate international behavior means that efforts to address the Kim regime require creative solutions. Any mission sent to North Korea needs to be flashy enough to attract attention and powerful enough to establish an agreed upon framework for future talks with the administration.
Why would Kim Jong-un be interested in an American mission now, regardless of star power?
The Pacific grows smaller every day. New free trade agreements link the U.S. and South Korea, Panama and Colombia, and an Obama-lead framework promoting a regional free trade agreement amongst Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) members is driving further integration. These agreements strengthen ties and increase security and economic growth without guns.
From Ping Pong diplomacy to the Plastic People of the Universe, sports, music and cultural diplomacy has assisted in opening up closed regimes in the past. Mobilizing change in North Korea will take time and a similar brand of creativity. But surely it’s worth the U.S. considering leveraging its monopoly on pop culture for a North Korea breakthrough.
James Lewis is a former senior policy analyst at a Washington think tank. Aimee Dineiro engages corporate America through nonprofit marketing campaigns.
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JJ Johnson
Katy Perry is not the most qualified person? She is not international whatsoever. The integration of a pop society is to be implemented in North Korea, something better should be done. Yet, if such a person was to be headliner, I can’t think of who else would be better to blame when the project will be, not might, will be such a failure
Lukas
After reading this article, I’m still attempting to come to a conclusion on whether the ideas presented in this article are supposed to be a joke or not. Katy Perry and Micheal Jordan taking part in diplomatic engagement with the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea? Perhaps Maybe both Kim’s share some sort of affinity for American pop and sport culture, but that doesn’t mean they wish it to be present within they’re heavily isolated kingdom. Such an action would, in the end, threaten the stability of the regime and the ethno-workers cult pioneered by Kim Jung Il. By clicking on this article I expected to read something intelligent, not absurd. This piece surely is absurd!
Seouljake@gmail.com
In 1994 Carter was not sent to North Korea by the Clinton administration. He went unbeknownst to and against the wishes of the White House and appeared on national television from Pyongyang making a strategic plea for peace at a time when Clinton was planning a first-strike of the Yeonbyeon nuclear facility. However the author’s point about timeliness is well-taken. Perhaps diplomatic and pop icons such as Albright and Jordan, or better yet for the Jong-un generation, Timberlake and Perry, need not wait for Obama to send them. Perhaps some grass-roots initiative from high-profile individuals in the civil sector would give a much needed shot in the arm to ailing US-DPRK relations.
Lukas
Using American pop culture as a diplomatic tool for engagement with the DPRK will never come to pass and any attempts will amount to failure. In the precarious position Kim Jung Un and his following seem to be in, as of this moment I strongly doubt, and quite frankly find the hole idea ridiculous, that they would find any use in opening up the isolated doors of North Korea to figures within American pop culture. Again, like I stated in my past comment, allowing such a thing to happen threatens the legitimacy of the regime. Do they want to deliberately introduce the citizens of North Korea to a culture they routinely bash in pieces of state sanctioned propaganda as parasitic, veil and imperialistic. Just because the elder Kim Jung Il (and possibly his heir) in his lifetime found American culture entertaining and enjoyable doesn’t mean he or his successor wish to present, demonstrate and/or idolize it in front of his people. The DPRK make’s use of intensive cultural propaganda in controlling its population, I presume most readers on here know this, such propaganda basis itself on the superiority of Korean culture, the superiority of the Korean race, and most of all, the destructiveness of the imperialistic west with its culture of extreme capitalism. Please, the ideas presented in this article, using something out of the Gingrich handbook, are baloney.