SEOUL, South Korea – He’s known for swigging cognac and owning thousands of bottles of vintage French wine. His private train is reportedly stocked with live lobsters served with silver chopsticks. He allegedly flew in an Italian chef to make him pizzas.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il loves his fancy food. But will he have to start eating more kimchi and less caviar now that a U.N. resolution passed Saturday has banned the sale of luxury goods to North Korea?
“I think the North Korean population has been losing average height and weight over the years and maybe this will be a little diet for Kim Jong Il,” John Bolton, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, said Friday as the resolution was under debate.
About 2 million people are believed to have starved to death in North Korea in the 1990s amid bad harvests and decades of economic bungling. As Kim tucked into gourmet meals, his people survived by eating tree bark, weeds and roots.
Some experts, though, doubt the U.N. measure – designed to punish the North for allegedly testing a nuclear device – will force Kim to go on a diet. They say the North’s shadowy network of trading companies around the world will find ways to skirt the ban and deliver sushi and shark fin to Kim, whose paunch stands out as much as his frizzy bouffant hairdo.
“The North changes the names of the companies all the time. It’s almost impossible to keep track of them,” said Bertil Lintner, author of “Great Leader, Dear Leader: Demystifying North Korea Under the Kim Clan.”
Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya questioned how the ban would be defined, saying on Friday: “I don’t know what luxury goods means, because luxury goods can mean many things for different people … if they don’t have it.”
Kim’s foodie ways are legendary but largely unconfirmed. Most of the tales come from defectors, foreign officials, journalists and chefs who got a rare peek inside the reclusive leader’s bizarre world.
One of the most interesting accounts of Kim’s lavish lifestyle came from Konstantin Pulikovsky, a former Russian presidential envoy who wrote a book, “The Orient Express,” about Kim’s train trip through Russia in July and August 2001.
Bradley K. Martin’s book “Under the Loving Care of the Fatherly Leader” included an account by Kenji Fujimoto, who claimed to be Kim’s personal sushi chef. The Japanese man said Kim had a 10,000-bottle wine cellar and ate shark’s fin soup weekly, the book reported.
“His banquets often started at midnight and lasted until morning. The longest lasted for four days,” the chef was quoted as saying.
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