Hot girls and democracy
Published: 02 Sep. 2003, 00:48
Now, don’t get us wrong. We here at Itaewon Wanderings usually support freedom and democracy and all that stuff. But when tyranny showed up at the Universiade games in Daegu with all the hot girls ― and girls who do exactly what they’re told ― we started getting more open-minded about it.
Frankly, we were mesmerized by the North Korean cheerleading squad. After a few days we were ready to trade in our political convictions and join all those intellectuals who espouse the “freedom for me, communism for them” thing.
That choice seemed especially clear when we saw what happened to the only people on the peninsula who were fighting for freedom last week: They got pounded silly. That German gadfly Norbert Vollertsen and his posse of right-wing nutjobs, after setting up their anti-tyranny exhibit in Daegu, promptly got worked over by a few scrawny North Korean journalists.
Then we saw what kind of passes you get when you team up with totalitarians, as the combative journalists got off scot-free. Probably the perks are nice, too. No doubt the reporters were rewarded for their pro-tyranny pugilism. Perhaps they were even treated to the companionship of the pure-hearted cheerleaders during the flight home.
We were in the mood for similar attentions the other night, so we went to Itaewon. We wandered for a spell until we found ourselves inside the Dream Bar, at the foot of Hooker Hill, and in the company of a particularly pure-hearted girl who works there, Sa Na-young.
In due course, after sitting down with Ms. Sa and floating her a 20,000-won Jack Daniels and Coke, we asked what she thought about the North Korean cheerleaders.
“They are so beautiful, more beautiful than South Korean women,” Ms. Sa said, drawing on the old Korean proverb.
“And their beauty is very natural; they wear almost no makeup.”
So, we asked, how did you feel when you saw them on television?
“I felt good and bad,” she said. “Good for my country, because they are so beautiful, but also sad, for some reason.”
Are you ready now, we asked, to become pro-Pyeongyang and pro-Kim Jong-il?
“No!” she said. “I’m not political. I’m not [the left-wing student group] Hanchongryun. I’m not left or right. I’m just me.”
After another expensive round or two, we paid the monster tab.
Then, on the way home, we got an idea. Maybe Mr. Vollertsen, to promote his whole “freedom for me, freedom for them, too” thing at his next publicity stunt, should take a page out of Kim Jong-il’s book and bring an army of hot girls to work for him.
But then we realized that it wouldn’t be as easy for Mr. Vollertsen as it is for Mr. Kim to get a bunch of girls to work for him a week.
You see, Mr. Vollertsen lives in a free world. So he would have to pay them.
by Mike Ferrin
with the Korea JoongAng Daily
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