Honored Guests: Please Don't Feed or Pet the Capitalists

Now that Dear Leader Kim Jung Il of North Korea has approved the presence of capitalists in the city of Sinuiju, the question is: will these creatures survive captivity?

Any scientist worth her salt will tell you whenever creatures are moved from their home habitat, it's a risky undertaking. Realizing this, Dear Leader has tapped Mr. Yang Bin to oversee the projected 120 acre theme park, tentatively titled, “A Journey West: Decadent Land of the Capitalists.”

The Chinese Mr. Yang is thirty-nine years old, wealthy to the gills from selling orchids to Manhattan grocers, and knows virtually everything about capitalists, right down to their Kiwi shoe polish. Oh yea, he owns his own jet too... Mr. Yang fends off accusations he is a running dog capitalist by having his assistants dress in dull green suits and Mao caps.

For the next eighteen months, Mr. Yang will oversee the construction of an exact replica of the corner of Wall St. and Broad, right down to the statue of the bull, which Mr. Kim insisted on after seeing a photo of it in Life Magazine. A full size model of the NYSE trading floor, along with a Brooks Brothers outlet and Ruths Chris steak house are still in the design phase.

Mr. Yang suggested a replica of a beach community in the Hamptons but settled on a miniature version after considering the costs of importing sand.

As any venture, expenses have to be kept in check but Mr. Yang vows this doesn't mean the project will be done on the cheap either. “We have no intention of forcing them (the capitalists) from high rises to tree houses,” Mr. Yang told reporters last week. “We want them comfortable, nobody’s going to pay to see depressed capitalists sit around all day.”

Ticket prices are expected to cost twenty-five cents for adults, five cents for kids under nine, and fifteen cents for senior citizens and those who haven't eaten in two weeks.

The only rough spot in the project is a disagreement over how to structure the park. Mr. Yang opts for a safari-like experience where guests drive about in jeeps with open sunroofs and observe capitalists in their daily routine: screaming over stocks trades, having their shoes polished by members of the oppressed masses, kicking homeless people in the groin with their Timberlands while screaming “get a job you sludge!”

Dear Leader, always keen on safety, opts for a more contained environment.

“You never know what a capitalist might do, especially if they feel threatened,” Mr. Kim said in a memo to staff last Thursday. Along those lines, he envisions an area divided into twelve, twenty-acre exhibit spaces, each encircled with three-inch thick plexi-class and rows of seats---like a Ranger’s game.
This will provide a clear view, while also preventing guests from petting the capitalists or tossing them scraps from barbecued squid-on-a-stick snacks.

Please, no flash photography either.

If all goes according to plan, Dear Leader hopes to cut the ribbon in 2004 on—what other day—May 1, International Workers’ Day.

- By Randall Krongard