A Delicious Lunch

It was the heaviest snowfall Gyeongju had seen in years, and everyone, including Comrade General Kim Jong-il, lately resurrected from death, was carrying umbrellas. The General stuck to the center of the sidewalks and refused to move to the left or the right at the approach of the miscegenated citizens of the puppet state, a policy which forced some of them to step off into the street (where several were immediately flattened by passing trucks), while most just shoved past the General and rubbed their umbrellas against his own, soaking the necks of all the parties concerned. After several hours of wandering the city and getting the back of his neck repeatedly soaked in this fashion, the General wondered if it might not be better to have the entire populace executed.

But after taking in the tomb mounds claimed by the illegitimate Yankee Colony Comrade General Kim Jong-il discovered that he was hungry for the first time since he had been spontaneously reanimated by the holy soil of the Korean nation. Disdaining to remove his large black goggles upon entering one of the city’s many notable Gimbap Heavens, which would have been empty but for the presence of one patron, one ajumma (or somewhat old woman), and one halmoni (or one fairly old woman), Comrade General Kim Jong-il attempted to order a light lunch for himself. “I’ll have mongoose stuffed with lobster,” he said, flashing his famous rictus of a smile at the ajumma hovering uneasily over the pyramid of gimbap rolls by the door. “With a dozen live sea urchins on the side.”

“But Comrade General,” protested the ignorant collaborator, “How are we to procure such specialties?”

The Dear Leader stopped smiling, and, after a moment of staring at this ajumma, he lifted a pistol from his fashionable jumpsuit (imitated by celebrities like Tom Cruise and Peter MacNicol the world over), and shot her right between the eyes. He was confident that she would not be brought back to life, as she wasn’t nearly as true to her race as he was.

“Is it really so difficult to get some mongoose stuffed with lobster and sprinkled with live sea urchins around here?” the Comrade General shouted into the kitchen at the back of the restaurant. Unlike the ajumma, the halmoni who worked there had been appraised of the General’s Lazarus-like resurrection that morning, as the television she wore around her neck had not been turned off in twenty-eight years. She bowed without making eye contact and said “Yes, I understand, Comrade General,” and got to work, though she wasn’t sure what she was working on.

“I didn’t know the Comrade General was such a good shot,” said the restaurant’s lone patron, a sympathizer who happened to be wolfing down a tone kassuh, or pork cutlet; the sympathizer had a pork cutlet for lunch every day and, as a result, his nickname around town had been “Pork Cutlet” since he had first been able to eat solid food.

“You have no idea,” Comrade General Kim Jong-il replied, sitting down across from the sympathizer, and, without breaking eye-contact (through his black sensuous goggles), aiming his pistol over his left shoulder and firing through the window at a stray mosquito that had been flitting among the snowflakes on the other side of the street.

Pork Cutlet naturally couldn’t see the mosquito and thought that the Comrade General was maybe feeling a little out of sorts after being brought back from the dead (I mean, who wouldn’t just start shooting in random directions?, he thought), but the Comrade General’s eagle eyes were able to discern, without even focusing, that the tip of the mosquito’s proboscis had been shaved off—just as he had planned.

The halmoni walked in and served the Comrade General his lunch, which was a platter of white rice and boiled meat and vegetables topped with hot sauce (also known as Korean Food). “Looks delicious,” he said, just before shoveling the food inside his mouth with his pistol.