The Greatest Golfer In The World

Is revealed.

The competition is being sponsored by the Pyeonghwa Motors Corporation, a South Korean automobile manufacturer, in the interest of promoting the peaceful unification of the countries, and the setting will be the Pyongyang golf links, the only course in North Korea.

Not a lot is known about the Pyongyang course, which was built in the mid-1980's by North Korean businessmen living in Japan. According to a press release issued two years ago by the Korean Central News Agency, its "plottage is over 120 hectares and the green covers 45 hectares, with a total length extending about 7 kilometers." That means it would play at roughly 7,700 yards - long even for a P.G.A. layout.

The news agency also says that the clubhouse roof is supported by pillars that look like golf clubs, and that "there are golf clubs and balls and other apparatuses for more than 100 golfers to play at the same time."

By all accounts, the course has a beautiful setting, near Lake Thaesong, and "during breaks," it is said - though it's not clear whether this means between holes or between rounds - "golfers enjoy collecting plants, boating and angling." An Asian golf Web site says "the course is blessed with the fullness of nature," but adds the somewhat alarming information that "crows pick up your golf balls and fly away."

[...]

North Korea, on the other hand, does not have much of a golf heritage, though it does boast of having possibly the best player in the world. That golfer is none other than Kim Jong Il, North Korea's dictator, who in addition to all his other duties, according to reports in the North Korean news media, plays regularly and routinely scores three or four holes in one a round.

Mr. Kim took up the game in 1994, and on his very first outing at the Pyongyang course he eagled the opening hole, according to the North Korean media. He then proceeded to ace five holes (or 11, according to some reports) on the way to shooting a 34 - or 38 under par. (The lowest recorded score in P.G.A. history is 59, and that has been attained only three times: by Al Geiberger in 1977, Chip Beck in 1991 and David Duval in 1999.)

Mr. Kim's score was so low that some disbelievers (though not in North Korea) at first suggested that it must have been for nine holes, not 18, but the 18-hole total was later verified not only by the club pro but by 17 bodyguards who accompanied the dictator on his round.

Mr. Kim will not compete in the North-South match. He has taken himself out of the fray - presumably to avoid the kind of international tension that has lately plagued the Ryder Cup competitions.

[...]

North Korea suffers from severe budget deficits, and one purpose of this summer's match is to publicize the Pyongyang course and encourage golf tourism. A golfer of Mr. Kim's abilities could also do wonders for his country's balance of payments simply by playing on the P.G.A. tour, where he would rake in millions. But that would take him out of the country for long stretches at a time, and presumably the people of North Korea can't be trusted to get along without him.

What would I do for comedy posts without the Dear Leader? A shame about all those suffering and starving under his totalitarian rule, but surely the comedy makes up for it. (After all, without Hitler, we wouldn't have The Producers and The Great Dictator, so it all evens out in the end.)

Read The Rest Scale: 2 out of 5 if you want more detail.

The Sacred Dagger of The Kanoman

Ready for some real life pulp fiction?

CIREBON, Indonesia -- There was once a crown prince, Djalaludin, who was being groomed as the sultan in a kingdom called Kanoman.

As he lazed in a courtyard one day beneath the broad canopy of a banyan tree, the prince spied a girl cutting across the palace grounds on her way home from school. She was 15 years his junior and the lowly daughter of a local restaurant owner, a commoner more comfortable in short skirts than finery and robes.

But the prince fell deeply in love with her.

Over the protests of his parents, the reigning sultan and queen, Djalaludin married the girl, abandoning the palace for a time and risking his chance at the throne.

Djalaludin's decision to follow his heart planted the seeds for a conflict that decades later threatens to rip the kingdom asunder. It pits his two sons, one born to the beautiful commoner, the other to a woman of royal breeding. Both young princes claim to be the 12th in a line of sultans tracing their ancestry back to the first holy men to reach Indonesian shores.

Read The Rest Scale: 4.5 out of 5 for pure color. Trust me; all it's missing is Giant Robots.

Official Secrets

It's a marvelous Act, indeed.

For the most extreme example of documents retained beyond all imaginable use, credit must go to HM Customs and Excise, which has kept secret a file dating back to 1674.

The papers, copies of letters patent granted by Charles II to two Customs inspectors in Kent, are kept in one of 11 files dating from before the First World War that are still retained by the department.

Others refer to the purchase of a revenue boat for Customs in 1902 and the investigation of Customs agents for undocumented offences, dated 1885. The fact that these documents are still retained means they must have undergone the scrutiny of the Government's appointed watchdog, the Advisory Council on National Records and Archives.

Asked twice last week to explain the reason for retaining the files, Customs did not reply.

There are other files kept from public view where it is easier to see the justification for caution on behalf of civil servants.

It is not difficult to understand why it might be necessary to hide a document called "Nuclear warhead technical data", even if it was last opened in 1963.

It might well be a bad idea to release a file dating back to 1972 called "Contingency planning for direct rule in Northern Ireland", especially when the Savile inquiry into the Bloody Sunday shootings of that year is still sitting.

But it is hard to understand the need to protect the 1960 document "Vulnerability of V Bomber force", when the last Vulcan bomber was phased out soon after the Falklands conflict, and why should the 1955 document dealing with the "British naturalisation of Prince Ernst of Hanover", who died 17 years ago, be so damaging to the national interest? The story made headlines at the time because of a court ruling that Prince Ernst August IV of Hanover, a German officer in the Second World War, was British by virtue of being the great-great-great-great-great-great-great grandson of the Electress Sophie of Hanover, granddaughter of James I of England and VI of Scotland. But his file was deemed so sensitive that it was closed until 2058.

Another closed file is a Cabinet Office document called "Ways and Means of reinforcing British claim to sovereignty over Rockall", the piece of rock jutting into the Atlantic 300 miles west of Scotland that is Britain's most remote borderland.

A file dealing with the order of carriages for George V's visit to Cardiff in 1927 is closed for 100 years and the Ministry of Defence retains a file on the 250th anniversary celebrations of the capture of Gibraltar despite the fact that we have just had the 300th anniversary.

Consultations of the Working Party on Dairy Products in 1971 are still retained, as are the Home Office files on disturbances in Britain dating between 1916 and 1919.

A pre-D-Day visit by Winston Churchill to Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force in 1944 is detailed in a file too sensitive to be opened to historians, as are a 1966 file on desalination work in Israel and a 40-year-old document on the sale of training aircraft to Indonesia.

The ancient Customs files are merely the most extreme example of why the system is so badly in need of an overhaul.

Some 397 of the retained documents date to before the Second World War and 81 are pre-1900.

Perhaps the most obscure document retained like this belongs to the Department of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.

The file was created by the forerunner of the Ministry of Agriculture and rejoices in the name of the "Wapentake of Ouse and Derwent Drainage Act, 1854".

American officials can only dream of being British.

Read The Rest Scale: 0 out of 5.

True news of the silliest land of all is here. Hint: it's about the land of Spamalot.

Lastly, a look at two different approaches to language, one by Christopher Hitchens, using language unfit for this family site, is here.