Eminentoes: North Korea's Dear Leader
Dealey, Sam
of that week's Economist said it all: "Greet- four sons at every chance. Kim himself did ings, Earthlings." It was the world's first not share a close relationship with his glimpse in a long,...
...Let's say he and his friends really do and likes to work at night...
...2 In hindsight, North Korea watchers North Korea's Dear Leader Kim Jong II is dangerous even when he's not drinking...
...Early he is trying to influence a whole country...
...ans] give liquor to friends to buy influence...
...have these all-night parties," said Nicholas Eberstadt oft_he American Enterprise Insti- he Dear Leader has an even darktute...
...Certainly severe In May the dictator paid a secretive visit where...
...Chun survived...
...land neurologists was hurried to Pyongyang a glass of champagne...
...W embraced at the summit in Cruella...
...In 1987 Kim ordered the down- of family reunions...
...She despised her husband's eldest, tor Shin Sang Ok and his girlfriend, actress Pyongyang this June, the cover and would later work to advance her own Choi Un Hi...
...Kim was convinced, they say, the works would be an international success...
...more...
...on he formed a "pleasure team" to service lead to more and more goodies...
...He's penned a book entitled Essays on the Cinema...
...believe...
...Western diplomats and meeting was made...
...Analysts estimate his account ran in the neighborhood of $75o,ooo a year...
...Kim himself did ings, Earthlings...
...It was the world's first not share a close relationship with his glimpse in a long, long time of one of its father, though he made pathetic attempts most reclusive strongmen, Kim Jong II, of to endear himself...
...For many years he favored Henproved to be his true devotions...
...Some believed gifts of fine brandy was Kim's way of consolidating power...
...rays of a "very" senior official" with a very" seconds flat...
...When the executive improve their lot, withholding food from esting news to emerge was that Kim conexpressed this astonishment, North Kore- international donor organizations, pro- fided to cadres that he'd cut back on his an officials asked if he could send zoo hibiting peasants from cultivating any- drinking and smoking...
...or producer," unaware, evidently, that he 54 December 2ooo/January 2ooi TheAmerican Spectator died in 1994 . Though the Great Leader had anointed Kim his successor, the first dynastic succession ofa Stalinist state, after his death it was far from guaranteed...
...He likes fast horses mate more than 2 million North Kore- from within and unable to manage a diploand fast cars...
...KoreKim can be gracious...
...Bang downed his and was soon reminded all too much of his own mortality...
...Bang Young Choi, a 31-year-old North Korean defector and former importer for Kim, said the Dear Leader dropped by the office one day to congratulate workers on the fine job they were doing...
...A Daimler-Benz executive ans have died of famine--roughly the matic stage, can no longer be justified...
...Mercedes cars and limousines every- Rouge regime of Pol Pot...
...Chun Doo-hwan during a state visit to Burma...
...Moscow archives place his birth on February- 16, 1942, in a far-flung corner of Siberia, just outside the ci b, of Khabarovsk, where his father had fled from the Japanese occupation of Korea...
...But when it comes to international He has proved a genius at playing the diplomacy--such as it is--he has proved a genius at playing the rest of the world, and particularly the U.S., for fools...
...The firmest personal information to emerge about the North's Dear Leader was that he's 5'3", but his shoe lifts and pompadour cast even that in doubt...
...long, leggy blondes from Scandinavia...
...Over the years, however, the media was full of his exploits gleaned from various intelligence communities and North Korean defectors-some diluted, some embellished...
...Evil, and Boris Badenoffwrapped into one...
...Its predilection for belligerence has proven a reliable vehicle for extortion...
...Ever the director, Kim would sometimes throw parties only to watch them on a closed-circuit television by himself...
...During a trip to Vienna eight years later they escaped...
...The pair was brought to Pyongyang because Kim wanted them to produce his movies...
...Stephen Haggard, director of the Korea-Pacific Program at UC-San Diego, exclaimed that"Kim Jong the Korean summit, Kim threw back ten glasses of wine...
...traveled to Pyongyang in 1998 and saw same number as died under the Khmer So is Kim Jong I1 a changed man...
...officials esti- types of an insecure recluse, challenged team of beefeaters...
...In another strange sign of things to has become more than that...
...His official biography, however, moves his birth to a log cabin on Mount Paektu on the Korean peninsula's border with China, the m?~hical birthplace of the Korean people's progenitor...
...At the parties, we usually danced to the band music of foxtrot or disco and occasionally gambled playing Or so the North would have the world blackjack or mahjongg," Choi later wrote...
...Reports said members of the military were grumbling, and his stepmother pushed for her own son, Kim's half-brother Kim Pyong I1...
...He has an amazing capacmovie star...
...Kim has a penchant for fast women, too...
...whom virtually nothing is known...
...He reportedly smokes these perpetual negotiations comes a veneer of legitimacy as the world recognizes that Kim Jong I1 is a man with whom to be reckoned...
...If you drink this," Kim reportedly said, "you are a man...
...But Korea watchers could barely contain their excitement...
...Just hours later at a signing ceremony for the joint communiqu4 that was supposed to herald the dawn of a new age in Korea, the two Kims celebrated with Kim Jong I1 chugged his bubbly in two 55...
...The fleet would cost $2o million, thing more than their collective quotas, The next month, at a banquet during a fifth of the aid promised North Korea by and failing to disseminate any agriculthe United Nations that year...
...His father later remarried, to Kim Song Korean media executives this August, he attributed Kim's change in taste to a fierce, i SAM DEALEY is an editorial page writer for confided that, had he not "become a politician," he "would have been a film critic behind-the-scenes power struggle over who would succeed his father Kim I1 Sung, who the Asian Wall Street Journal in HoTzg Kong...
...In a meeting with South When Kim was seven, his mother died...
...To this day young South Korean women are haunted by tales of abductions, the year before...
...That's a weakness the Dear Leader During the 196o's, it's thought that he trained as a pilot in East Germany...
...Kim Jong I1 was constantly offering me drinks, disregarding my weakness in drinks...
...All his own people, from whom he demands above a l l - i n complete control...
...The South's Kim Dae Jung, meanwhile, promised the North more intelligence agencies believe North Korea development and aid of the sort that beneis a major middleman in Asia's nmshrooming drug trade, and sells weapons of mass destruction to rogue countries such as Syria and Iran...
...He is regarded as the maskeep them going...
...Given that no one else in North Korea has access to such a precious commodity but Kim Jong I1, it's likely he's distributing it," Seoul National University Professor Ahn Chung Si told the Asian Wall Street loumal...
...But once the sugar daddy fell, the North found itself alone and broke...
...nessy's VSOP, or Very Special Old Pale, He's an avid watcher of CNN, and tele- but in 1992 switched to Hennessy's Paradis, vision in general...
...He has a hypochondriac's fear of rorism is the complete disregard he has for I1 appeared relaxed, magnanimous and-germs and a paranoid's eye for plots...
...The businessman was especially flooding and, later, drought are partially to Beijing, thought to be his first trip abroad surprised to see new S-class models, retail- to blame, but Pyongyang did little to since 1983 (also to China...
...Since 1995, U.S...
...for fools...
...In February 1994, a senior Chinese milHe reportedly maintains a harem that itary officer tipped off South Korean diplowould bring glory to any sultan worthy of mats in Washington that a team of mainthe name...
...In 1978 he ordered the kidnapping from hen the two Korean leaders Ae, but her name might as well have been Hong Kong of South Korean film direcby Sam Dealey a So-year-old brandy--the oldest commercially available--at $630-a-po p. In 1994, Hennessy confirmed that Kim was its biggest single buyer of cognac two years running...
...He has a library of more than zo,ooo videotapes-James Bond and come, Kim at age four, according to a formet aide to his father, would stamp on ever3, earthworm and insect he could find...
...In Comworld---and particularly munism's heyday, North Korea limped along thanks to massive assistance from the Soviet Union...
...Kim's birth, it's said, was foretold by a swallow, and the event itself was marked by the appearance of double rainbows and unseasonable blooms...
...In the symbiosis of art and life, he is Blofeld, Dr...
...But if even half of the stories are true, Kim is the kind of man who gives rise to legends...
...DJfy Duck are among the Dear Leader's favorites--and a staff of lOO to translate them...
...In a countrywhere split families account for upwards of lo percent of the population, Kim agreed to only a handful fits the Workers' Party elite alone...
...But worse than any of these acts of tertural technology or policies...
...A promise for a future ing of a South Korean passenger plane...
...seventeen others were killed...
...And with him and his father...
...ity for alcohol and an especial weakness But movies, writing, and the single lifestyle for cognac...
...In 1973, he married his typist...
...Others poo-poohed talk of a challenge and simply chalked it up to Kim's usual playboy Dunhill cigarettes--three packs a day-ways...
...The American Spectator 9 December 2ooolJant~ary ~ooz cracked marble...
...In the early 197o's, he had a fling with a Soviet never exhibited...
...Stereoimported food is tested by a 4o-member utter fealty...
...He placed soup bowls in front of them, filled with cognac...
...There they were shown Xbut visitors and defectors say Kim favors the U.S...
...The account confirms many North Korea watchers in their belief that Kim isn't dealing from a full deck...
...If you do the arithmetic, termind behind the 1983 assassiit seems quite possible that there's never nation attempt on South Korean President really much left to give away...
...How many bottles would it take to er side...
...The Korean summit in June was no different...
...The most intering around $1oo,ooo...
...Insincere promises to behave and abandon its weapons development and proliferation While it was certainly a historic and per- T haps even interesting spectacle, not much came of it...
...M1 115 on board died...
Vol. 33 • December 2000 • No. 10
