Cape Town - While various South Africans waged war with words, South Korea went the full big-speaker route and resumed blasting propaganda and music across the border into the North.
In a world filled with stabbings, suicide bombings, shootings and alleged hydrogen bombs, this response seems so quaint and surreal it could well be a plot device in a Gabriel Garcia Marquez novel: magical realism involving banks of army-green speakers and DJs wearing military fatigues.
However, the tactic becomes less benign when one listens to the music South Korea is firing north.
I was first introduced to K-pop, as this genre is called, in Bolivia.
Yes, Bolivia – not Seoul or Incheon. I heard it on the radio while browsing the market for tomatoes, I endured it in a minibus taxi for three hours, I witnessed gaggles of teenage girls walking the streets of La Paz dressed like saucy air hostesses and sat in a plaza one afternoon patting a stray dog and watching troupes of teenagers in leggings perform K-pop dances.
For reasons unfathomable to cultural critics, K-pop has swept through Bolivia like a molten tide of sweet, pink candy.
Girls faint at concerts given by idols such as Kim Hyung-jun (not to be confused with the comic strip-like leader of the North), a Justin Bieberish K-popper with perfectly tousled hair.
Fansof K-pop stars are abundant across the country and, according to one radio DJ, some Bolivians have officially changed their names to Korean ones while others have had plastic surgery so their eyes look “more Korean”.
It’s all very confusing – but I can see how blaring that genre of music into Kim Jong-un’s sticky-out ears would get under his skin. It is banging, cheesy stuff, with repetitive choruses often comprised of edifying lyrics such as “na-naa-na-naa-na-naa”. K-pop makes Justin Bieber sound like John Denver.
I can imagine the supreme leader sitting on his potty, stamping his feet and thrusting his fingers in his ears when he is shot 15 times in the heart with Big Bang’s song Loser or Sistar’s Shake It.
This got me thinking that we could emulate South Korea’s noteworthy assault here. A large Zulu gospel choir wearing bathing suits could find out where Penny Sparrow lives and stand outside her home singing songs about love and monkeys.
Neil Diamond – Jewish and the epitome of light, white entertainment – could be piped into Velaphi Khumalo’s bedroom between 9pm and 2am every night.
And Bette Midler’s Wind Beneath my Wings could be sung on repeat by a tone-deaf mechanic through the windows of the dweeb who lives opposite me and is partial to revving his bike for three hours and then hurtling like a cat assassin down the road.
The whole of Orania could be blasted with Miriam Makeba from speakers hidden in the Koeksister Monument.
The whole country could be subjected to me singing John Lennon’s Imagine in a key suited only for squirrels and Disney ballads.
By the chorus everyone would be bleeding from the ears and weeping so much, we might even agree to get along – just to make it stop.
Further afield, Donald Trump – who at the weekend praised Kim Jong-un’s ability to “wipe out political opponents” – deserves a 45000945-decibel attack of the cheesiest “na-naa-na-naa-na-naa” K-pop has to offer.
Burundi’s President Pierre Nkurunziza should be hammered with no fewer than 30 consecutive days of the Argentinean national anthem, which has to be longest, most murderous piece of music ever penned, while President Robert Mugabe should receive a year’s worth of post-modern harp concertos performed by gay men from Winchester.
Russian President Vladimir Putin needs Tibetan singing bowls. I just know it. They say music has the ability to move us.
This might be proven correct in North Korea as the South’s so-called pop-agenda offensive – which can apparently be heard 30km across the border – continues.
Perhaps the sound of Kim Hyung-jun will send Kim Jong-un fleeing further and further north until he is forced to cross into China, where the Roquefort of cheesy music, C-pop, awaits him.
Or he could end up in Russia, huddled with Putin in the tack room of a hunting lodge – both inexplicably in their underpants – whimpering as their violent and bloodthirsty opponents crank up the volume and gently stroke metal bowls.
Cape Argus