| Submit your comments on this article | |
| China-Japan-Koreas | |
| He’s Asia’s biggest foodie | |
| 2004-06-27 | |
| MR KIM Jong Il likes to eat sashimi carved from a live fish. He hates anchovies on his pizza. He insists that the grains of his rice be absolutely uniform in size and colour. 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 his epicurean habits, more is known about what he eats than nearly any other head of state. In what might be labelled cook-and-tell literature, two of his former chefs have written about their experiences and revealed the secrets of the most important part of any Kim Jong Il residence - the kitchen. Three years ago, Italian Ermanno Furlanis wrote a series of confessional magazine articles titled I Made Pizza For Kim Jong Il. A more recent entry in this genre is a book published last year in Japan and South Korea by a sushi chef who worked for the reclusive dictator from 1988 to 2001 and now lives in Japan. North Korean defectors and even Mr Kim’s family members have also been sufficiently impressed by his eating habits to dwell on food in their memoirs. What can be gleaned from these accounts is that Mr Kim, 62, is becoming one of the world’s most legendary gourmets - so much so that North Korea watchers believe the way to his psyche is through his stomach. ’He’s the biggest foodie in Asia,’ said Mr Michael Breen, the British author of a recently published biography of Mr Kim. While his countrymen scrounge for food in barren forests, Mr Kim has spent an incalculable chunk of his nation’s limited wealth feeding himself. His wine cellar reportedly contains nearly 10,000 bottles, his library thousands of cookbooks and texts on gastronomy. Chefs have been flown in from around the world to cook for him. An institute in Pyongyang, staffed by some of North Korea’s best-trained doctors, is devoted to ensuring that he eats not only the most delectable, but also the most healthy foods, all the more important for the 1.53m Mr Kim, whose weight once pushed 90kg. ’The purpose of the institute is 100 per cent to prolong the life of Kim Jong Il,’ said Dr Seok Young Hwan, a physician who worked there and later defected to South Korea. He said 200 professionals were working just in the division that handled Mr Kim’s diet. So insistent is he 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 mangoes and papayas. Once, on a whim, Mr Kim sent him to Tokyo to pick up a particular herb-scented rice cake. Mr Fujimoto calculated that each bite-size cake ended up costing about US$120 (S$205). 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 Mr Kim’s consumption - among them exotic items such as camel’s feet, said South Korean biographer Sohn Kwang Joo. Mr Kim insists that his rice be cooked over a wood fire using trees cut from Mt Paektu, a legendary peak on the Chinese border, according to a memoir written by a nephew of his first wife. He has his own private source of spring water. Female workers inspect each grain of rice to ensure that they meet the leader’s standards. Mr Kim’s refined palate is not merely a matter of idle gossip, but the subject of serious study by political psychologists trying to understand the North Korean leadership. Mr Jerrold Post, a psychiatrist who founded and was the longtime director of the CIA’s Centre for the Analysis of Personality and Political Behaviour, said Mr Kim’s obsession with eating the best food comes from being the son of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung, revered by the propaganda machine as a god-like figure. For most of his adult life, Mr Kim has been renowned for his profligate lifestyle. In the early 1990s, trade figures leaked to the media revealed that he was the largest single consumer of Hennessy cognac, importing more than US$650,000 worth of top-of-the-line stock a year for his private collection. He is believed to have moderated his ways on the advice of his doctors. He reportedly quit smoking in 1999 and lost weight. He switched from cognac to red wine. Admittedly, some of his tastes might be considered unappetising. He apparently relished some foods so fresh that they were still wriggling. His former sushi chef boasted that he was able to slice a fish, artfully sparing its vital organs, so that it would still be alive when served to Mr Kim as sashimi. ’He was loud in his praises, saying it was extremely delicious,’ chef Fujimoto wrote. Mr Post diagnosed the younger Kim as a malign narcissist in large part based on information about his eating habits. ’This is how you prepare food and water for a god. Nothing remotely imperfect should cross his lips. He has this special sense of self so that there is no contradiction between the exquisite care that goes into his own cuisine and the fact that half his population is starving,’ he said. Mr Kim’s biographer is equally critical. ’This kind of spoiled elitist behaviour is not so unusual. You see it in South Korea in some of the sons of the rich and famous,’ Mr Breen said. ’But for such a person to be head of a country in dire need of leadership is nothing less than tragedy.’ A South Korean analyst, however, finds some comfort in Mr Kim’s epicurean tastes. ’Kim Jong Il loves life. He is a drinker, a womaniser, a gourmet. To start a war requires an ascetic like Hitler, who doesn’t care if he lives or dies. But I can’t see Kim starting a war that he will surely lose,’ said Mr Kim Kyung Won, a former South Korean ambassador to the United States.
| |
| Posted by:tipper |
| #14 They left out that part about how a substantial part of Jong-Il's kitchen budget covers the hiring and heavy attrition of his food tasters. |
| Posted by: Zenster 2004-06-27 2:50:11 PM |
| #13 From the Free North Korea article there are 3 known sons: Kim Jong Nam Son of the dictator with the movie actress Sung Hae Rim, Kim Jong Nam had a bizarre upbringing lavished with toys but rarely allowed out. Previously seen as the heir apparent, he was arrested in Japan in 2001 as he attempted to travel to Tokyo Disneyland on a forged passport. Kim Jong Chol Possibly the favourite to succeed Kim Jong Il, this 22-year-old is Kim's son with the former dancing girl Ko Yong-Hi. He was educated in Geneva. His younger brother Kim Jong Woon was recently renamed "Morning Star King" by his mother, according to some defectors' reports, suggesting he may be her choice. |
| Posted by: ed 2004-06-27 2:49:19 PM |
| #12 |
| Posted by: .com 2004-06-27 2:46:54 PM |
| #11 Lol, Frank - Is the Dear Leader vein rich or what? Hell, if it didn't exist we'd be hard-pressed to make such great shit up as what flows au naturel from NorK. This must be one of those farm-raised NorK ducklings... it might make Mucky feel better...  |
| Posted by: .com 2004-06-27 2:43:00 PM |
| #10 I'd be willing to fix him a hemlock cocktail. |
| Posted by: JerseyMike 2004-06-27 2:39:39 PM |
| #9 the 4 yr old was prolly an appetizer |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-06-27 2:30:45 PM |
| #8 Lol! - Thx, ed! Sorta jowly and chunky - definitely not one of the lowly NorKs - and not enough hair to pouf. Why is it that the wymyns always look soooooo much better than the myns? |
| Posted by: .com 2004-06-27 2:28:44 PM |
| #7 I rest my case :-) |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-06-27 2:27:58 PM |
| #6 1 May 2001 Kim Jong Nam, son of North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il, is detained at passport control in Narita international airport for attempting to enter Japan with fraudulent identity papers. The 30-year-old arrived from Singapore with two women and a 4-year-old boy, as well as a set of forged passports from the Dominican Republic. Kim Jong Nam claims that he just wants to check out Tokyo Disneyland. Photo, upper left Also "Dear Mother": http://www.freenorthkorea.net/archives/freenorthkorea/000624.html |
| Posted by: ed 2004-06-27 2:19:34 PM |
| #5 No heirs to my knowledge. His chromosomal makeup allows him to successfully mate only with certain species, generally, Sea-Monkeys and Ring-Tailed Lemurs |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-06-27 2:14:51 PM |
| #4 So, um, does Dear Leader have any male heirs? Do they have the same pouffy hair? Is one being "groomed" to be Lovable Leader? |
| Posted by: .com 2004-06-27 2:02:31 PM |
#3 Mr Kim’s refined palate is not merely a matter of idle gossip, but the subject of serious study by political psychologists trying to understand the North Korean leadership.I can save the shrinks some time and effort in their "serious study": HE'S NUTS. Otherwise known as two cabbages shy of kimchi. |
| Posted by: Barbara Skolaut 2004-06-27 1:56:55 PM |
| #2 lol Ima think Muck will go ballistic |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-06-27 10:39:32 AM |
| #1 MUCKIEEEEE! |
| Posted by: Shipman 2004-06-27 10:31:50 AM |
