Show'em Who the Boss Is

Show’em who the Boss is
September 13, 2000

A. At the Frankfurt Airport in Germany
On the tarmac at the Frankfurt Airport in Germany, a Jumbo 747 airplane freshly painted with American Airline logo was on the routine checkup for the trans-Atlantic flight at late afternoon.
At the check-in gates for the Flight No.176 for New York City-bound, there were a pack of burly security officials standing with their arms akimbo and they appear to be looking for someone specifically to apply “enhanced security procedures” travelling on an international flight regulated by the Federal Aviation Authority.
They had hardly stopped or inspected any boarding passengers until an entourage of dark-suited Asians have approached the x-ray screen gate of the security check, and a stocky-built security officer demanded to open each and every items of their luggage for visual inspection while other barrel-chested female officer was patting down all over the body ordering them to take off their shoes and jackets.

When the body search has come to the turn of elderly and bespectacled gentleman, a dumpy body-guard of the group intervened between the Airline security officer and the gentleman and other members of the entourage loudly complained about their brigandish violation of etiquette with respect to the state representative.
The entourage have left the security checkpoint in drove and gathered in the lobby when the security officers had refused them to board without undergoing stringent body patting, and the elderly gentleman instructed his communications officer to establish the secure line with his country for further direction.
The flight 176 took off the airport without the group of North Korean delegation for the Millennial UN Summit and the North Koreans hastily boarded on Lufthansa airplane for Peking, China, after announcing that the United States will come to know what a dear price it will pay for having hurt their people’s dignity.

Couple of weeks before the security shakedown on the North Korean entourage, a head of American Airline (AA) security has received an unexpected telephone call from his old boss who is still working at the Pentagon under the command of Joint Chief of Staff, and he had an evening rendezvous with one-star general buddy at posh French restaurant at the upscale Frankfurt downtown.
After usual exchange of nicety, AA man asked what the general is up to in Germany, and their conversation had lasted over couple of hours:
General: Uncle Sam has been ill at ease and somewhat irritated since June détente in the Korean peninsular, because these dog-meat eating people have gone beyond the limit of being vassal statehood and tried to short-circuit our American interests in the region. As you have read in the newspaper, Uncle Sam had to shelve the National Missile Defense (NMD) program that would appropriate $60 billion for our military industrial complex and we have to scale back the various military operations in the peninsular. There have been numerous case of anti-American movements in the region because these people appear to formulate the dream of pie in the sky, a grandiose illusion that Uncle Sam would wash his hands to leave for two Koreas to talk and dance.
AA man: But, I gather that we wished two Koreas get together along to tone down the hostility in the region.
General: Yes and No. First, we have reached a Framed Agreement with the North several years ago in order to buy the time until we are ready for implementing NMD in general and TMD (Theater Missile Defense) in particular to checkmate the North’s nuclear threat. Uncle Sam would never forget that we have lost and been humiliated in the Korean War, which technically is not ended yet. It would be gross misunderstanding if the North expect that Uncle Sam love to help them out from the starvation. On the other hand, it was true that we played the music for our comprador, DJ Kim, to dance with the North on our pinhead, but he went out too far by giving out millions of dollars to the North. We think that he should be called on the carpet for his prodigal spending on hermit kingdom.
AA man: Do you have some thought of overthrowing him out as we did in Vietnam, Chile, Iran, Panama, Granada, Nicaragua, and so many countries?
General: Oh, No. No. No…that is becoming obsolete and clumsy strategy now. By the way, he’s not so bad factotum…he has done whatever we ordered him to do. He sold almost all-lucrative national treasures in the auction block at the Wall Street. He opened up his financial sectors for the international fire sales and laid off thousands of workers according to the IMF instruction. He has become our poster boy for the globalization of national wealth. So we simply want to apply some humiliating brakes on Koreans and let them know that they are still tied on the American peg. You know, Koreans are quite sensitive and arrogant small fries who possess an excessive pride in their superiority over their neighbors.
AA man: I am afraid that you are here to brief over the Korean affairs, but I have left US army several years ago after my last stint in DMZ at the South Korea. As a local security head for American Airlines, I don’t have any clue why I am briefed over the foreign affairs of Uncle Sam.
General: Aha! Here comes the little bombshell. Are you aware of the Millennium UN Summit at New York City in early September?
AA man: Not particularly, but I have received the formal notice from German government that an entourage of the North Korean dignitaries would transfer from Lufthansa to our American Airlines to travel to New York City.
General: I understand your army career had something to do with CID at military police.
AA man: I am still not with you. But you wouldn’t ask me to do something no good to the North Koreans?
General: No, not at all. I would not ask to place balls of crack cocaine or time bomb in their luggage. Instead, I want you to apply as much stringent security check as possible on them before boarding the plane until they hit the ceiling. Nothing illegal or sinister to check their possession and do some thorough physical search. You follow the FAA rules on the passengers from the rogue states.
AA man: What’s point? You want my guys pick up a fight and put them in an airport lockup missing the flight to New York City?
General: The optimal result would be that they pack and return to their country because they were pissed off so terribly by your guys. Uncle Sam wants the global spotlight all over him in the meeting with world leaders, especially with Ehud Barak and Yasir Arafat. He doesn’t want two Koreas steal the limelight on the world stage. It’s not apropos to let them dance on their own tune with Castro and Ayatollah looking on them.
AA man: I understand you want me to stage a major contretemps with the window of deniability.
General: You are quite a smart man.
AA man: Would the media jump on the speculation that the incident is premeditated to disrupt the summit?
General: Uncle Sam would take care of such allegation as a regretful occurrence and treat it with minimal attention.
AA man: Should I confer with my head office?
General: I have consulted with your boss through the good office of FAA and he assured me that nothing would happen untoward to you. My basic argument is that Uncle Sam is not a partner with AA in this regard in any fashion, form or scheme, and it happens due to some overzealous security men applying FAA rules.
Show them who the boss is. And humiliate them as much as possible.

B. On Trans-Pacific Flight.
DJ Kim had a bad nightmare in his sleep on his Trans-Pacific flight, barely escaping from the strangulation by the late-dictator Gen. CH Park who called him a commie-sympathizer and traitor, when his aide woke him up to convey the bad message that the North’s titular head on his way to the Summit was bumped from the American Airlines and returned home.
He has felt a spell of vertigo when he stood up and collapsed on the reclining chair moaning his bad luck.
He’s been doggedly harassed by his political opponents recently in the another financial scandal of a corrupt mandarin in his office, the slump in the stock market, the strike by the medical doctors and skyrocketing international oil price.
He hoped that another summit meeting with the North would salvage his dying popularity in the course of the Millennial UN summit.
He immediately ordered to summon all his aides.
DJ: I can’t buy that Uncle Sam was not aware of the North’s flight schedule.
Aide: Neither do I sir, and no one would be such stupid to fall into excuses that AA security has unwittingly bungled in body search in an execrable manner. They never have done that over Castro or Ayatollah entourage.
DJ: why do they want to pour a bucket of cold water on my agenda?
Aide: I think that a group of reactionary cabal in the Pentagon had staged a mongoose operation to disrupt the détente atmosphere in the region, because they are furious of losing the hegemonic power in dictating their own agendas like the deployment of TMD/NMD programs.
DJ: I believe that the North got really pissed off by the incident.
Aide: You should send telegram of apology with the memo that we would facilitate an express delivery of food aids and other economic development plans.
DJ: Comrades! We are at the critical juncture in the revitalization of our sliding popularity. We have to embark on an all-out media campaign to water down this contretemps. I want you to arrange as many press interviews and dinner parties with media people, especially with New York Times and CNN Larry King if possible.
Aids: Sir, CNN appearance is not possible because of your execrable English.
DJ: My bottom line is I want to talk with as many heads of states as possible, whether it’s head of Fiji, Turkmenistan, or Sweden to show them I would be the next hopeful for Nobel Prize. And make sure that Mr. Putin and Mr. Ziang wouldn’t go home without seeing me.
Aide: What’s up in your mind?
DJ: I need their help to hold the North tight to my ass. Would it be far-fetched idea to announce the Trans-Siberia pipeline for oil and natural gas through the North?
Aide: Well, Sir, you had a knack to sell the story to your people that the North accepts the half-century occupation of US army. You have known very well that our people got such a short memory span that they have elected so many crooked politicians over and over again. It is a piece of cake to confuse them with a bunch of feel-good programs like the rail-road connection, Paktu Mountain celebration, celebrity exchanges, and so on. We should persist to call the North to come up with our proposals to have another meetings at higher levels.
DJ: Got damn it! I have told my people so many lies in order to save my skin…I can’t go back home with empty hand.
Aide: People are angry because we have sent spies back without getting back our kidnapped people.
DJ: I don’t want the South’s POWs to be repatriated back at this time, because they would become instant pain in my ass. They would bad-mouth about the North as soon as they get interviewed by the press and the whole shebang would fall apart. As a disciple of Machiavellian, I have developed to be a pathological liar. What a heck with one lie or hundred lies. Let’s announce that the North and the South would reach the peace accord before I retire from the presidency during the press conference, as I have brayed that we could achieve the balanced budget and full employment in 2003.
Aide: a superb idea, Sir. Let hundreds of lies and illusions bloom.

C. In the den at Hermit Kingdom.
JI, Kim, an enfant terrible in the Pariah State, has been mulling over the South’s invitation to Seoul with much annoyance. He has been weighing over the pros and cons arguments in his Labor Party caucus…
DJ Kim, a poster boy for capitalism, has kept pestering him constantly that he visits Seoul before Christmas this year by sending him tons of fertilizer corn and rice.
First of all, he has never trusted anyone, let alone DJ who hails from the province with the notorious characteristics of backstabbing, and he wonder why he has to take a risk of being kidnapped by the rogue Delta Forces of the United States and locked up in the clink of US district court for terrorism against Americans.
He simply wants DJ to keep in limbo, not far but not too close to the substantive deals except a token reunion of separated families.
He never forgets that the imperial Yankee had abducted and sentenced General Noriega of Panama for life in the US prison and Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Yugoslav’s Milosevic were on the dead-or-alive most-wanted list with millions of dollar reward.
However, his people are in dire straits indeed for lack of food and dearth of fuel in approaching winter, and he has sent a message through his emissary that DJ may announce his visit would come about in 2001 in return for over $100 millions of food aids.
As DJ at the Millennium Summit in New York City was eager to pronounce that JI visits Seoul next spring, JI and his cadres of the Party caucus were in the situation room at the bunker hill near Pyongyang City formulating the next moves in response with the humiliating insult against their delegates by Uncle Sam at the Frankfurt Airport.
JI: My deceased father has told me that Yankee has the nature of the imperial beast and it is foolish to expect the beast to act in other way.
Comrade: Absolutely, Sir. Also, we should not forget the reality that DJ does not act on behalf of his people but his master, Uncle Sam. He has been on his knees upon IMF’s orders to give out every valuable national treasures for international corporations like Chase Manhattan, Citicorp., Merry Lynch, and Ford. He can afford to give us few millions of dollars in return for his presidency and Nobel Prize.
JI: DJ would be stupid if he thinks he gets the laureate without me.
By the way, I had something in my mind when I instructed my commissar to tell DJ that I come to Seoul next spring.
I think that Americans stand a chance electing a president in November who has probably killed more people before he gets into his office than any other president in the US history. Of course, Andrew Jackson killed a hundred times as many people before being a president as George W. Bush did, if you count American Indians as human beings. Now, you guys are not dumb enough not comprehending what I mean that I don’t have much chance to visit the South next spring.
Who would risk one’s life by walking into a lion’s den in the first place? I don’t need a Nobel Prize as desperately as DJ. I don’t think George would like to become my pal when he gets in the office. And DJ will be left out cold on a limb, and until then, I would squeeze him out as much as possible until he drops dead. That’s why I have sent a box of elixir (mushrooms) to make him healthy.
Comrade: Your Excellency. You are smarter than Henry Kissinger.
By the way, I have just received the letter of regret from a vixen in the US State Department over the Frankfurt incident. What’s in your mind about the brigandish act?
JI: I do not forget our naval defeat at Yellow Sea years ago and we have eaten a bitter crow at that time. We’ve got a double whammy now and we tentatively accept a letter of regret, not an apology. As I have said that the smaller the country is, the more prestige they must keep, I am going to deliver a coup de gras in due course.
In the meantime, I want our foreign minister to cancel the UN attendance, and no more significant contacts with the South would be allowed until the November election in the United States.