It may be time to try hip-hop diplomacy with North Korea

Frank Cerabino

Monday, April 22, 2013 | 2 a.m.

It’s time to send Jay-Z and Beyonce to North Korea.

The couple celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary in Cuba under an “educational” license from the U.S. government. Some Cuban-American legislators from Florida have been very critical of the trip.

“If the tourist activities undertaken by Beyonce and Jay-Z in Cuba are classified as an educational exchange trip, then it is clear that the Obama administration is not serious about denying the Castro regime an economic lifeline that U.S. tourism will extend to it,” said Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, R-Fla.

But I prefer to look at the couple’s anniversary trip as a clandestine diplomatic mission, a bit of undercover hip-hop diplomacy.

Jay-Z, who travels with a beat box, responded to critics of his trip by writing a new rap called “Open Letter,” which questioned why Cuba’s communism was different from China’s communism:

“I’m in Cuba / I love Cubans / This Communist talk is so confusing / When it’s from China / the very mic that I’m using.”

Pretty good point there. Maybe even educational.

China, the vital trading partner that fills America’s Wal-Marts and makes our iPhones, isn’t much different from Cuba when it comes to politics and repression.

But nobody ever suggests that Jay-Z is traitorous because the Chinese-made microphone he uses helps to secure the dictatorial rule of China’s communist regime.

These are just the sort of diplomatic flourishes that are needed to break decades of fruitless embargoes that have failed miserably to impose democracy from abroad. Both in Cuba and in North Korea.

Which is why Jay-Z and Beyonce need to take their vacation diplomacy tour to the Korean peninsula.

It’s worth a try. Denying trade to North Korea’s starving population, conducting military exercises off their shores and putting them on an “axis of evil” to-do list has only managed to push them toward nuclear weapons and validate the paranoia of their new leader Kim Jong-Un, the youngest head of state in the world.

A good way to ease that paranoia would be to bring home the 30,000 American military men and women stationed in Korea, and send in Jay-Z and Beyonce. (Bonus rap opportunity: Pyongyang rhymes with “thang.”)

If you think this is just wild lefty blabber, here’s conservative Pat Buchanan on Korea:

“What are we doing there that South Korean soldiers could not do for themselves? Why is South Korea’s defense our responsibility, 60 years after President Eisenhower ended the Korean War?” Buchanan said. “For over a decade, some of us have urged the United States to pull all U.S. troops off the peninsula. Had we done so, we would not be in the middle of this crisis now.”

South Korea has twice the population of the north, and its economy is 40 times bigger, Buchanan noted.

And North Koreans are so malnourished that its Army fills its ranks with soldiers who are 4 feet 6 inches tall.

Sure, the voluptuous Beyonce may be eaten alive in North Korea, but it’s a chance we should be willing to take to restore calm.

That could be achieved through basketball diplomacy. We know that Kim is fond of American basketball. There’s a Michael Jordan-signed basketball on display in a Pyongyang museum, and Kim went out of his way to warmly receive former NBA player Dennis Rodman in a visit this year.

Jay-Z is part-owner of the Brooklyn Nets basketball team. And as it turns out, he now needs to sell his small share of the NBA team in order to pursue his new business career as a sports agent.

Sounds like a starting point for a new round of talks.

And maybe it leads to North Korea’s Lil’ Kim getting to own a piece of the Brooklyn team in exchange for the nuclear disarmament of his country.

Sounds crazy, but no crazier than doing the same thing for nearly 60 years even though it isn’t working.

Frank Cerabino writes for the Palm Beach Post in Florida.