UN’s North Korea Sanctions: “Don’t Let Kim Enjoy!!!”
While big leaders in the United States and some other nations are tearing their hair in the face of North Korea Kim Jong-il’s defiance, some sensible guys are suggesting that the sanctions should be such that hurt the dictator the most.
Believe it or not but high on the agenda of the UN members is to deprive Kim of his favourite food and drinks that are mostly imported.
“No one enjoys luxury goods more than paramount leader Kim Jong-il, who boasts the country’s finest wine cellar with space for 10,000 bottles,” says Reuters report from Seoul.
“Kim has a penchant for fine food such as lobster, caviar and the most expensive cuts of sushi that he has flown in to him from Japan, according to Kim’s former chef.
“Kenji Fujimoto, a pseudonym, who worked as Kim’s personal sushi chef in the late 1980s and 1990s at a time when more than 1 million North Koreans perished in a famine, said in a book Kim would go to extremes to satisfy his appetite.
“Kim would have aides purchase caviar for him in Iran and even sent one envoy to Beijing to bring back McDonald’s hamburgers, he said.”
Then there is another interesting article in The Seoul Times…
“The North Korean leader might be one of the world’s most enigmatic figures, but thanks to a growing and eclectic body of books and articles that detail Kim’s epicurean habits, more is known about what he eats than nearly any other head of state.
“In what might be labeled cook-and-tell literature, two of his former chefs have written up their experiences and revealed the secrets of the most important part of any Kim Jong Il residence — the kitchen.
“So insistent is Kim on eating the best of everything that he sends trusted couriers on shopping missions around the world. His sushi-chef-turned-author, who writes under the pseudonym Kenji Fujimoto, revealed that he made trips to Iran and Uzbekistan to buy caviar, to Denmark to buy pork, to western China to buy grapes and to Thailand for mangos and papayas.
“Once, on a whim, Kim sent him to Tokyo to pick up a particular herb-scented rice cake. Fujimoto calculated that each bite-size cake ended up costing about $120.
“Former North Korean diplomats who were stationed abroad have told South Korean intelligence that they were asked to send each country’s delicacies to Pyongyang for Kim’s consumption — among them such exotic items as camel’s feet, said a South Korean biographer, Sohn Kwang Joo.”
The Times has this to say: Kim Jong IL will find it harder to get his beloved cognac, sushi and Hollywood films when the UN imposes sanctions today targeting the lavish lifestyle of North Korea’s ‘Dear Leader’.
“At Washington’s insistence, the UN Security Council is expected to prohibit trade in ‘luxury goods’ as well as heavy weapons, missile parts and components for the North Korean nuclear programme when it votes to punish Pyongyang for its nuclear test.
“Unlike his father, who led the austere life of a guerrilla leader in the 1930s, Mr Kim, 64, indulges his interest in women, food, fine wine and the movies. The bouffant-haired dictator, who stands only 5ft 3in if he is not wearing his customary platform shoes, is married to at least his fourth wife — Kim Ok, 42, a concert pianist who doubles as his secretary.
(Kim’s official family portrait)
“But he is alleged to be a philanderer, with a ‘happy corps’ of young women as a personal harem, and is rumoured to have 13 children.”
Maybe Kim is angry that the CIA never indulged him (and showed his anger by exploding a bomb!!!). But then after King Bush came onto the scene he never listened to anyone, including the CIA.
8 Responses to “UN’s North Korea Sanctions: “Don’t Let Kim Enjoy!!!””
Though probably his official family also lives lavishly, that family portrait is really depressing. They look like a family composed of a bus driver and a cleaning woman. I guess this is on purpose to give the communist image of no one having more that anyone else, but still, they at least could try to look happy.
Based on his tastes and hypocracy I wonder why he doesn’t run for a political office here in the US.
ScrappleFace has a great take on the North Korean sanctions.
Another great piece from The Onion.
The trouble with sanctions is that they rarely effect the people in power, the people who have virtually no control over events are the ones who typically suffer. That and the sanctions are often make a handy excuse for the people in control to explain why life is not good, look at the way Castro has used US sanctions to justify the lack of progress in Cuba. Sanctions against the elite of Korea are better than an over all type of sanction but the ease that this group could get goods smuggled across the border from China makes me believe that any sanction of this type would be more symbolic than substantive. Sometimes I think that the way to undermine the regime would be to use smuggling to flood the country with portable generators and TV/radio/ movies that show the long suffering Koreans what life is like outside the “utopia� of NK.
Grognard is right. Just look at how Saddam’s countrymen starved under the US sanctions while the Oil for Food program through the UN was totally corrupt.
Just give a thought Kim Ritter how the Iraqi people were doing before the US sanctions and the UN progamme. They were, comparatively speaking, doing fine.
I agree, Grognard. Sanctions also make it look like our leaders are “doing something”so they can justify their existence to their political base. They also can be used by our enemies to unite their population ,or those who believe in a cause against us. Where are the cases where they have been used successfully?
Swaaraj- I have never argued in favor of the Iraq War or sanctions which starve civilians, while leaving the leadership intact. I favor energy independence to keep the US out of ME affairs as much as possible, with the possible exception of peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. Also, I believe in internationalist policies which aim at alleviating the worst of the world’s problems— like human rights abuses. You are preaching to the choir, here.