North Korea’s subÂÂterranean detonation of a nuclear bomb came as a shock to the international community. Naturally it came as a greater shock to the dozen dissidents who were no doubt volunteered to man the observation cage, bolted to the tunnel floor roughly six feet from the alarm-clock-activated detonator. But nevertheless the outrage of the wider world seems justified. The news is grim. North Korea has a nuclear bomb, and as soon as they pick all the bits out of the bedrock, and wash off blobs of dissident, they’re going to reassemble it and maybe explode it down in the mineshaft again.
Of course not everyone is convinced. There seems to be a growing consensus in the defence community that the sinister, truck-mounted cruise-missiles Pyongyang parades for news cameras are in fact the fibreglass porpoises stolen from the lobby of Sea World in Seoul last year; and leading ballistics experts are still sceptical about the rogue state’s ability to deliver a nuclear package any meaningful distance without the aid of FedeX.
Indeed, the latest intelligence suggests that North Korea is still heavily reliant on its Tik Tak Toe ballistic missile, an oak barrel filled with gunpowder and liquorice and launched via catapult. Details are sketchy, but analysts agree that if such a weapon were adapted for nuclear payloads (perhaps by stapling on another barrel containing a Tupperware full of uranium sheathed in liquorice), it could, with a prevailing tailwind, reach the parking lot.
Some have gone so far as to question whether any bomb was ever detonated. For instance, it is not impossible that Kim Jong-il’s dachshund, Yip Yap Pong, while rooting about in the fortified substrata one afternoon, stumbled across the country’s buried stockpiles of cabbage, a delicacy prized by the autocracy and kept well hidden from the proletariat, who must make do with a diet of tree bark and dew. Yip Yap, having eaten nothing but dust and the wings of long-dead Japanese moths gusted across the sea, would have tucked in with gusto. Several hundred tons of cabbage later, all it would have taken was a careless sentry, tossing his cigarette butt into the festering quagmire of fetid air that pulsed evilly around Yip Yap’s nethers, to ignite the Pong. Thus one cannot rule out the possibility that what Seoul saw on its monitors was a 50-kiloton dachshund fart. Unlikely, but not impossible.
However, caution and sense must prevail, and we must assume that Pyongyang has real nuclear bombs, made by real Russian and Chinese scientists from parts made by real Americans and Frenchmen — a kind of genocidal United Colours of Benetton — and that it is quite prepared to FedeX them indiscriminately. Now is the time for bold leaders to step forward and to make bold statements about taking stern steps towards concrete discussions about potentially serious strategies to facilitate the establishment of a possibly definitive set of guidelines that, if implemented, will open the way to further dialogue. For real.
Naturally not all will waffle. George W Bush will tell it like it is. ”Amurka will not shtand bah and allow trinny and newkewler terrrism to shpread its tentaculars round the free whirled … Fridm musht per-veil … Murkan valoozh … whore on terrr … winning … whippins iv mash destruction … boys home by Christmas … Condee told me. Or was it Colin? Afcan-Murkans … great people …”
But behind the formal responses, just how sincere are the condemnations? Surely Iran’s outrage is founded less on concerns for global stability than on the disappointment of being pipped at the post? After all, nobody ever remembers the second country to obliterate a major American city.
South Africa, too, has said the right things, but just what did the news of Yip Yap Pong’s percussive demise mean to our leadership? Did Mr Mbeki’s chin betray the tiniest twitch of a smile as he flirted with visions of strapping Blade Nzimande, Strangelove-esque, to a plummeting nuke? Did the health minister rush down the stone spiral staircase to her laboratory, yelling at her homunculus to leave the cauldron (where her latest efforts to turn cholesterol into platinum were simmering) and to prepare the slab for fresh research, this time into the effects of Zambuck on radiation burns?
And far away, did Jacob Zuma pause, where he laboured in his study trying to work a tricky modulation into the adagio of ”Bring me my machine gun”, suddenly reinvigorated by the tidings from Pyongyang, as if struck by a breath of fresh, superheated air? The quill would have become frenzied as the libretto took shape …
Bring me my machine gun of burning gold, bring me my bullets of desire; bring me my spear, oh clouds unfold! Bring me my gigantic expanding tide of radioactive fire!