New book: Defector tells of shopping in Europe for North Korea dictators
A new book tells of Col. Kim Jong-ryul, who went on shopping sprees for North Korea dictators Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il before hiding in Europe for 16 years. His tell-all could threaten his life, he says.
New book: Army Col. Kim Jong-ryul gestures at a news conference in Vienna, on March 4, on the occasion of the presentation of the book 'Im Dienst des Diktators' ('In the Dictator’s Service') by Ingrid Steiner-Gashi and Dardan Gashi.
Hans Punz/AP
Seoul, South Korea
Firsthand exposés about the personal lives of North Korea’s leaders can put the lives of their authors at risk, even if they are far away.The latest tell-all, published in Austria by two journalists to whom former Army Col. Kim Jong-ryul told his story, is a case in point.
By his own account, Mr. Kim – who describes the dozens of villas and beautiful furnishings included in the lavish lifestyles of Kim Il-sung and his son Kim Jong-il – says he realizes the danger.
“Maybe I’ll be shot, killed in the next few days,” Kim Jong-ryul, who escaped North Korea in 1994 and now lives at a secret address, told reporters in Vienna after the book came out. At least, "now I can die with a clear conscience," he said. But “without [publishing] this book, I didn’t want to die.”
The book adds to a growing body of evidence of the selfishness of the North's Kim Il-sung, who ignored the suffering of his people while focusing on his own comfort and safety. An engineer, Kim Jong-ryul said he was asked to design a special filtration system for the shelter in which Kim Il-sung and his family could hide in order to survive a nuclear attack.
The Great Leader, as Kim Il-sung was routinely called, placed special agents in Europe just to buy the fancy items he wanted. An agent in Romania, for instance, bought a small Cessna plane for him, as well as hunting rifles. Kim himself sometimes spent months at a time looking for all the goods, big and small, on the shopping list.
