HA!!!

From today's Australian:

Thanks but no thanks, Mr Kim
Peter Alford, Tokyo correspondent
18jan07
LAST May, while blithely ignoring international entreaties to stop his ballistic missile test preparations, dictator Kim Jong-il was making his own overtures to Japan's best-known conductor, Seiji Ozawa.While the Vienna State Opera's 71-year-old music director was recuperating from illness in Japan he was approached by an emissary carrying the Dear Leader's request to take the baton at North Korea's national orchestra, the Seoul daily JoongAng Ilbo said.
"I was truly impressed by your conducting," Mr Kim wrote, having watched a video of Ozawa's work.
"I really want to have you as the conductor of the National Symphony Orchestra," wrote Mr Kim.
Ozawa responded that he couldn't, because he was contracted in Vienna until 2009.
He might also have been discouraged by the spreading international furore as Mr Kim's technicians readied the first test launch of a ballistic missile.
The missile's intended target is the US, where Ozawa studied and worked for 40 years before leaving the Boston Symphony Orchestra in 2002.
Mr Kim's minions frequently threaten to use their missiles to turn the conductor's homeland into a "sea of fire".
But the Dear Leader replied he had no objection to Ozawa working for the two companies.
Among the more than 1500 learned books he has produced is "Kim Jong-il on the art of opera; a talk to creative workers on the field of art literature, September 1974".
Unlike most of Mr Kim's oeuvre, the existence of this work cannot be questioned: you can get it on Amazon. He offers such insights as: "The opera singer has to sing while acting and act while singing ... similar to the method of depiction used by stage and film actors who speak while acting and act while speaking ..."
One Amazon reviewer lauded it as "the best work of its kind since Pol Pot's 'Maria Callas: the bel canto years'."
In August, however, Ozawa decided to decline the offer.