The Hidden People of North Korea (8 page)

Fujimoto had a particular interest in Kim’s cuisine and kept records of some of the dinners. Here, for example, is a menu for a family dinner: chilled flowering fern, radish dressed with vinegar, quail egg jelly, grilled pheasant, sautéed rice noodles, sautéed mushrooms, fried octopus with ginkgo nut, Chinese cabbage stew, and dog meat soup, not to mention the usual selection of side dishes that accompany every Korean meal.
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According to Fuji-moto, Kim’s tastes in food are eclectic, but he particularly appreciates the delicate flavor of Japanese food, including sushi, noodles, and shark fin soup. Kim also likes Western food and even hired two Italian chefs to come to Pyongyang and teach his staff how to make pizza.
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The domestic ingredients for Kim’s meals come from special farms. For example, Kim’s beef comes from a cattle ranch staffed by former bodyguards who enjoy a princely standard of living but are prevented from leaving the ranch to mix with ordinary people.
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A defector who had a relative working on one of Kim’s farms told how the organic apples were cultivated by adding sugar to the soil (sugar is very hard to come by in North Korea) and severely pruning each tree to produce just a few sweet apples.
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Foreign ingredients for Kim’s table are procured by North Korean officials stationed in embassies around the world.

Of course, the North Korean media give an entirely different description of Kim’s diet: “We all know what simple meals the great general takes on the road when giving on-the-spot guidance. Rice balls, some roasted potatoes, a bowl of porridge and kimchi. What hot tears all the people of this country shed every time that the anecdotes about his simple meals were reported in the newspapers!”
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Or consider this “apology” to the dear leader (published in the party newspaper,
Nodong Sinmun
) by a writer who describes the pain Kim is said to have felt when he realized how hungry his people were: “It was heart-breaking to see the general in such agony. We were ashamed of ourselves for having brought anxiety to the general through our poor performance. At that moment, I came to see more clearly why the general was always on the move from front to front, having short and uncomfortable sleep in the car, instead of staying home and getting a comfortable sleep in his own bed, and why he ate rice balls and scorched rice gathered from the bottom of the pot on the road instead of eating proper meals prepared by the people.”
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Fujimoto describes how Kim travels around the country, estimating that he is away from Pyongyang about three hundred days a year. His entourage is not informed about trips until the last minute—obviously for security reasons. Kim usually travels at night or early in the morning in an attempt to avoid surveillance from U.S. satellites. For trips lasting more than a few hours, Kim may take his personal train; shorter trips are made in a caravan of Mercedes, with Kim’s car in the lead driving as quickly as the roads allow. Kim’s travels take him to one of a dozen or so villas situated in the country’s scenic mountain and seaside locations. On the larger estates guests can move around the extensive grounds in golf carts, and on one estate they are even given cars.

Fujimoto and other sources have provided detailed descriptions and photographs of some of Kim’s country hideaways.
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Each house has a resident staff, and Kim travels with a retinue of as many as one hundred security people, staff, and guests. All but one of the houses has a movie theater, a shooting range, and a basketball court. Three houses have indoor swimming pools. Most of the furnishings are imported from Japan and Europe. The Wonsan house, where Hyundai founder and chairman Chung Ju-yung stayed on one of his visits to North Korea, may be Kim’s favorite. It faces the East Sea (Sea of Japan) and is convenient for water sports in the summer and duck hunting in the winter. The house also has a basketball court (the Kim boys loved basketball) and a nine-hundred-meter horse racetrack. Guesthouse No. 72, on the sea near Hamhung, has a beautiful beach, and Kim used to enjoy jet skiing there, although in recent years it is doubtful that his health allows him to engage in such strenuous activities. The Hamhung Guesthouse actually looks like a modern condominium, standing seven stories high with three of the floors underground. The Mt. Myohyang Guesthouse has two basketball courts. The Tanchon Guesthouse is located at a hot springs, as is the Sinchon Guesthouse. The Changsong Guesthouse, along the river border with China, is another place Kim enjoyed jet skiing. The Chindale Guest-house, near Pyongyang, has a three-hole golf course. Guesthouse No. 22 has a three-thousand-meter horse track and a small amusement park. So far as we know, no other members of the elite class are permitted to own such villas, although top officials, like their Russian counterparts, are permitted to vacation in modest countryside dachas.

Fujimoto reports that Kim is an impulsive buyer. For example, one day Kim gave the chef a catalog and asked him to pick out two motorcycles. Two weeks later the motorcycles arrived, and the two went racing around the grounds of one of the guesthouses. Kim introduced Fujimoto to pistol target practice, at which Kim was an expert. The targets at one guesthouse were cutouts of American and Japanese soldiers (these are the standard targets at children’s parks as well). At least in years past, Kim loved to stage sporting contests and watch people compete against each other. In shooting matches, he would offer prizes of chocolates, clothing, women’s underwear, cash (in dollars or yen, not the local currency), liquor, and home appliances.

In the 1990s, Kim started inviting army generals to his parties, and guests enjoyed singing Japanese military songs and South Korean popular songs, which it was forbidden to sing in public. In addition to drinking a glass of brandy as an “admission fee” to his parties, guests were invited to engage in drinking contests for prizes. Kim himself rarely drank, but he loved to watch other people getting drunk. His brother-in-law, Chang Song-taek, often served as toastmaster. At parties a troupe of entertainment women, generally known to foreigners as the “joy team” or “pleasure team,” often sang and danced in scanty outfits.

Fujimoto had more freedom to travel than do most North Korean officials, although he was always required to obtain Kim’s permission. One time he was sent to Moscow, along with three cooks and three waiters, to prepare box lunches for a private Moscow-Pyongyang flight carrying members of Kim’s family back to North Korea. Another time he joined a small group of officials sent to Macao to test a gambling system Kim had developed. He was sometimes sent to Japan to purchase fish and other ingredients for Kim’s meals, and on one of those trips, in 2001, he decided to stay at home. Since returning to Japan, he has written books about his North Korean experiences—and lived in fear of assassination.

Kim Travels across Russia with a Diplomat

Few foreigners have had the opportunity to meet with Kim Jong-il on a daily basis over a period of several weeks. One who did was Konstantin Pulikovskiy (Pulikovsky), who accompanied Kim on a trans-Siberian rail journey to Moscow in the summer of 2001 as President Vladimir Putin’s personal envoy.
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Kim’s train, consisting of five North Korean and seven Russian railcars, crossed into Russia on July 26 and returned on August 18. As Pulikovskiy said, “I had always wanted to cross our vast country by rail at least once in my life, of course, but I never would have chosen to make it a round trip.” Kim Jong-il’s railcars included his private car, a car for meetings, a dining car, and a car that carried two armored limousines. The North Korean staff lived in their own railcar. Among Kim’s entourage was a “charming young woman” who acted as Kim’s assistant, as well as four attractive young women entertainers who danced and sang in Korean and Russian. Koreans addressed Kim as “Great Military Leader” or “Beloved Leader,” bowing deeply when they entered his presence and speaking to him in the third person.

Kim understood some Russian words and phrases and was always inquisitive, showing considerable interest in how private Russian businesses had developed since the end of state socialism, although he told Pulikovskiy that it would be impossible to run his own country as a market economy because providing for the welfare of so many people in a small country required an authoritarian government.

The train had a satellite hookup so Kim could keep up with the news, and he was well aware of what the Russian and world press said about him. “The Western media have made up so many stories about me. … I am the target of criticism throughout the world. This is what I think, however: As long as people are talking about me, I must be doing something right.”

Dinners on the train consisted of fifteen to twenty dishes prepared by Kim’s chefs, although, like Fujimoto, Pulikovskiy reported that Kim ate only a small portion of each dish. Kim revealed his keen interest in food by discussing the next day’s menu with his Russian host. Four times during the journey, the North Koreans flew in a plane-load of fresh food and flew back the garbage. Kim also had French Bordeaux and Burgundy flown in from Paris, thus belying the claim made by the North Korean press that “the whole world knows that his state visits to foreign countries are not as luxurious and comfortable as those made by foreign presidents, and that they are partisan-style, field operation-style.”
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The daily conversations between Kim and Pulikovskiy ranged over many topics, with Kim easily switching from one to another. On the subject of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright’s recent trip to Pyongyang, Kim said, “I believe that she found my character to her liking.” On the subject of his 2000 summit meeting with South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, Kim Jong-il said that he only understood about 80 percent of what his counterpart said because of their different dialects. In a discussion of drug use in Russia (North Korea also has a serious drug problem), Kim said he had ordered drug dealers and users in North Korea to be shot, and he told Pulikovskiy that if he came across any Korean drug addicts, he had Kim’s permission to shoot them as well.

Security for Kim was tight. The train was protected by a contingent of fifty Russian security guards and about two dozen North Koreans. One locomotive traveled seven minutes ahead of the train and another followed. In Omsk, where local officials remained unsure until the last minute as to whether the train would even stop, Kim’s train pulled into the station with Korean riflemen running alongside, causing his Russian hosts to wonder what Kim feared. A Russian official explained, “We were obliged to take into account the different mentality of the representatives of North Korea. It is no secret to anyone that this mentality is totally different even from that of Soviet people not just 15 years ago but even perhaps about 40 years ago.”
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Much of the Russian press coverage of Kim’s trip was negative. Reporters complained that his travels disrupted the lives of thousands of Russians, and they criticized Kim for avoiding the press. More ominously, Kim’s presence, and the respectful reception he received from Russian officials, reminded many reporters of Russia’s own dark, totalitarian past. One article in the press asked, “Does Russia, which is dreaming of becoming part of the modern world, need to do business with this historical anachronism?”
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Aleksandr Bovin, a Russian political scientist, offered the opinion that Kim Jong-il was “a guest from the past—but this is our past as well.”
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A writer for a government-owned newspaper said he had expected Russian officials to view Kim’s visit ironically, considering that Kim embodied Russia’s past, but instead, in order to play the game of “big politics,” Russian officialdom gave Kim a “totalitarian framework” for his visit.
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A weekly paper characterized Kim as “a representative of an odious political system which our nation rejected in 1991” and called Kim’s visit a “humiliation” for Russians.
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Izvestiya
’s description of Kim’s arrival in St. Petersburg spoke of the “frozen faces” of the gray-suited members of the Korean delegation, “reminiscent of the Soviet Union 50 years ago.”
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The few Russian officials who met Kim seemed to have a generally favorable impression of their guest. Pulikovskiy described him as a “very sociable man” who cracked many jokes and was cheerful and gregarious.
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The governor of St. Petersburg (which Kim insisted on calling Leningrad) described Kim as taking a lively interest in history, culture, and the economy, and he quoted Kim as saying repeatedly that North Korea is a “very open and friendly country.”
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Kim’s talks with Putin, especially the second, when Kim received a surprise invitation for a “home-cooked” meal, apparently went well.

As usual, the North Korean media kept Kim’s travels a secret as long as possible, presumably in order to foil possible coup plots on the part of his domestic and international enemies. On the day of his departure, the media announced that Kim would soon pay an official visit to Russia without mentioning any date.
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Three days after Kim’s departure, the Korean People’s Army received an order over Kim’s name to increase its combat readiness, and at about the same time, the media reported that Kim had sent letters of thanks to railway workers, bank officials, and coal miners, as if he were working at his office. Only after his official meeting with President Putin, nine days into the trip, did the North Korean media announce that Kim was in Russia.

Kim’s return, however, received immediate and widespread coverage. The Party Central Committee, the Central Military Commission, and the National Defense Commission issued a joint communiqué announcing Kim’s return, saying he had “carried out energetically external activities” for over twenty days.
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KCBS, in a veiled reference to the earlier news blackout, said that Kim “set out on a journey to a faraway foreign country so silently. … People who regard themselves as politicians generally go to great pains to make the media circle’s attention center on them. The respected and beloved general does not enjoy this.”
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Although the visit did not produce anything other than the usual formal document of friendship, the papers treated the visit as a historic occasion. “The world watched each step of the respected and beloved general while holding their breath. This was how things went. It was obviously a shock. It was a shock that instantly shook the world. … Every day, some 5 billion people of the world’s five continents saw and heard news of the respected and beloved general’s historic official visit.”
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