Tall Juche Latte, To Go
	An encounter over coffee with North Korea's Dear Leader
	By Donald Macintyre

Posted Saturday, July 26, 2003; 03:00 HKT

There he was, standing in front of me in line at a Starbucks in downtown Seoul: baggy hip-hop jeans, a Chicago Bulls jersey draped over his paunch, baseball cap pulled down over that famous 'do. I couldn't believe it, but there was no mistaking those trademark Dr. Evil shades. Kim Jong Il was ordering a latte.

"What are you doing here?" I mumbled in shock. "Shhh," he whispered urgently. "Not here. We need to talk." The Dear Leader gestured towards a corner table and waddled off, licking foamed milk from his knuckles. I paid for our drinks and some almond biscotti and joined him at a table by the window.

Kim blew on his coffee and gazed out the window at the crowds of young South Koreans strolling past in fashionably torn jeans, cellphones glued to their ears. I stared. "What are you doing here?" I asked him again.

"Well, with everybody expecting me to cause some sort of ruckus at the 50th anniversary celebrations up at the DMZ, I figured nobody would expect me to slip down to Seoul and just, you know, hang out," he said, taking a tentative sip. "Mmm. No matter how many baristas I kidnap, you can't get latte like this in Pyongyang."

He looked wistfully at Seoul's gleaming skyscrapers and across the lanes of busy traffic. "This place seems to be doing all right," he murmured. "Fifty years ago, the North and South looked pretty much the same."

"Yes," I replied. "They both looked like demilitarized zones."

Kim scowled irritably. "That's not it," he said. "That's not it at all. Even after the war, we were just as good as the South -- we were stronger, even. Why do you think we invaded you guys in the first place? Now, I'm drinking a cup of coffee that costs enough to feed folks back home for a month."

"It doesn't have to be that way," I commented.

"Well, what am I supposed to do?" He asked plaintively. "My economic reforms aren't working. The Japanese won't give me a yen." He tugged on the brim of his hat with both hands. "But my nuclear blackmail isn't getting me anywhere either. I've kicked out the international inspectors, restarted my reactor and opened up my plutonium stash. I've even threatened to make a bomb," he exclaimed, thumping the table and startling a pair of teenagers flipping through magazines on the sofa, "But that cowboy Bush just yawns and keeps saying this isn't a crisis. If I tested a nuclear device he would probably pretend not to notice!"

"Shh! Cut it out," I told him, wiping up spilled latte foam and giving him my biscotti. He started nibbling on it. In his agitation, Kim's hair had begun to unfurl; now he looked less like an aging Seoul hipster than, well, Kim Jong Il in a baseball hat. "Look, the United States will cut a deal with you if you really get rid of all those nukes."

Kim let out a belly laugh. "How can we trust the Americans? I mean, look what they did to Iraq: made up some stories about WMDs and then went in shooting." He bit into his biscotti and chewed at me defiantly.

"Well, sure," I replied, "the Americans can't be trusted. But this plutonium thing has got everybody upset, even the Chinese, and they're your only allies. You're playing right into Bush's hands on this."

"But the U.S. has more nukes than anybody else, and they sell weapons all over the globe," Kim broke in. "That's supposed to be fair?"

"Well, no," I said, "but that's the way it is when there is only one superpower. And you guys don't exactly have a great track record: terrorism, drug trafficking, counterfeiting..." Kim shrugged. "The Americans might try to strangle you economically, but they really aren't interested in dropping bombs on you. If it came to that you could still take out Seoul, they figure, even without the nukes." Kim looked as if he were about to object, but let me go on. "So why not surprise everybody and declare you are going to get rid of your nukes?" I asked. "You could be the reformer, the guy who saved the day. You could be North Korea's Gorbachev."

Kim nearly choked on his coffee. "And look how well it worked for him," He snorted.

"Seriously. Think about it," I said, looking him right in the eye. "Everybody would rush to give you money and aid. You could rebuild your economy and go down as a hero in Korean history." Kim gnawed pensively on a biscotti. "You really think it would work?" he asked, his fingers twisting a curly strand of hair poking out from under his baseball cap. "Would they still respect me without my nukes?"

"Of course they would," I said soothingly. Kim still seemed unsure.

"Once you open the reform door, things can spin out of control..." He tailed off, his chin resting on his Bulls jersey, then straightened up and threw back the rest of his coffee. "Let me think about it. Thanks for the drink." With that, he got up, smoothed his pompadour back under his cap and gave me a perfunctory nod. Before I could say a word he was gone, through the Starbucks doors, melting into the summer crowd.