A gourmet with a taste for the good life, North Korea’s reclusive leader Kim Jong-Il will continue to enjoy his favourite French wines and foreign delicacies despite a United Nations embargo on luxury goods for Pyongyang, analysts say.
A thriving black market will likely ensure Kim a steady supply of what he likes best, they said, with smugglers always ready to sneak over the border.
Accounts by foreigners and North Korean defectors published over the past decade paint a luxurious lifestyle for the ”Dear Leader” in stark contrast to the raging poverty gripping the nation.
According to a book by his former Japanese chef, a sushi specialist, Kim takes great pleasure in tasting fish that are still wriggling. Others recall him dining on the freshest imported lobster with silver chopsticks.
And to wash those delicacies down, Kim has long been known to enjoy French cognac, in particular Hennessy VSOP.
In recent years however, he and others among North Korea’s political elite have apparently switched to wine, much of it smuggled in via China and South Korea.
”There is frequent trade originating from China and South Korea concerning wine. In particular expensive wines. There are some routes well established by Chinese and South Korean dealers,” said an Asian-based employee of a large French wine company, who wished to remain anonymous.
”As for the best wines, it is notorious that the North Korean leaders mainly get their supplies through China.”
The employee said a Chinese wholesaler recently wished to acquire nearly 500 cases but his company refused the order as they believed the wine was bound for North Korea.
Not everybody has qualms about supplying North Korea’s communist leaders with goods that the rest of the nation’s impoverished population of 23-million cannot afford.
According to experts on North Korea, while the general population suffered famine in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union, luxury goods were a form of reward for those loyal to the communist regime.
It is for this reason the sanctions agreed by the UN Security Council to punish North Korea for its October 9 atomic test included a ban on the import of luxury goods alongside much more specific measures aimed at curtailing the regime’s nuclear programme.
”These sanctions are designed to target the nation’s elite, and Kim Jong-Il, specifically,” said Scott Bruce, of the US research centre the Nautilus Institute.
Or as the US ambassador to the UN, John Bolton, put it: ”Maybe this will be a little bit of a diet for Kim.”
However analysts say the luxury goods ban will not stop Kim and his loyal henchmen continuing to indulge their expensive tastes.
”I think it’s a slap on the face of the regime by the international community, but I don’t think it will be very efficient,” said Leonid Petrov, who holds the Korea chair at the Paris Institute of Political Studies.
”North Korea produces wonderful liquors and they still can get things from China or Japan, they can smuggle it.”
Kimberly Elliot, of the Centre for Global Development and Institute for International Economics in Washington, said luxury goods were small enough to be easily smuggled into the country regardless of any UN ban.
”On that score, the financial measures blocking access to overseas accounts and attacking revenues from illicit activities are likely to be more effective,” Elliot said.
John Feffer, co-director of Foreign Policy in Focus and the director of global affairs at the International Relations Centre in the United States, agreed the ban on luxury goods would not have much impact.
”Certainly the very top leadership in North Korea enjoys some of the same perks that other world leaders do: fine drink, good food,” Feffer said.
”The sanctions may affect this, but I doubt it. That’s what black markets do best. There will still be a flow over the border from China.”
One of the main blackmarket portals is believed to be the Chinese border city of Dandong, separated from North Korea by the Yalu River and which forms the main trading link between the two countries.
Pyongyang’s elite use Dandong to engage in activities aside from legitimate trade, such as goods smuggling, drug trafficking and money laundering, said Norbert Vollertsen, a German activist based in Seoul who helps North Koreans escape. – AFP