PYONGYANG, North Korea. Switzerland has reopened its diplomatic office in this capital, and Foreign Minister Ignazio Cassis travelled here to inspect the asset. Kim Jong Un, the head of state, did not meet him. Bern has converted Swiss neutrality from a reputation into a lease agreement: they now pay monthly rent on a door that remains, for accounting purposes, technically open.
The mechanism is priced. Inside the bureau, Swiss diplomats perform the duties of presence: receiving visitors, transmitting messages, waiting. Local protocol maintains a waiting list for audiences with the head of state. The reopened office places Bern in the queue of the queue. It is a premium position. They are paying for the privilege of being the first to know when the line moves, which, per the last fiscal report, it has not.
Cassis conferred with officials and called the outcome "fruitful." No fruit was itemized. The summit-level harvest remains standing in the field, and the tending is billed monthly.
"We do not pay for meetings," confessed Markus Steiner of the Presence and Premises Unit at the Department of Foreign Affairs. "We pay for the possibility of meetings. Possibility is the only asset in Pyongyang that never leaves the building." The landlord’s side is warmer. "Ideal tenant," noted the property manager, identified by title only. "Pays punctually, occupies quietly, and has never once asked us to open anything."
The invoice, itemized: rent on the premises, paid by Bern; heating, lighting, and a flag, paid by Bern; salaries of the waiting, paid by Bern; the meeting with the head of state, priced, invoiced, and carried forward into the next fiscal year. It all hides under one line item, maintenance of channels, which on Terra covers the channels and the absence of traffic in them.
The quarter closes with one office, one minister, one adjective, zero meetings between the two principals. The ledger, as usual, balances. The question is whose side of it. This quarter, the door is on Bern’s side of the ledger, locked from the inside, and Bern is paying for the key.
