Regards, Ivan
Posted on 12/07/2002 5:21:05 PM PST by MadIvan
Kim Jong-il, the North Korean dictator, is one of the most mysterious leaders in the world, but a Russian general who rode with him on a train for a month was given a bizarre insight into his peculiar, pampered life. Mark Franchetti reports
As the world focuses on America's attempts to topple Saddam Hussein, a unique profile has just emerged of the reclusive dictator at the other extreme of President Bush's "axis of evil", Kim Jong-il of North Korea.
One of the most powerful men in Russia, Konstantin Pulikovsky, a former general who is President Putin's pro-consul in the east of the country, was host to the "Great Commander" when the communist leader travelled in his own armoured train across Siberia to Moscow and St Petersburg last year.
The Russian's account of their journey, published in Moscow as a book, is a disturbing insight into the absolute power of a pampered strongman who rules a closed nation that is racked by starvation yet is developing nuclear weapons.
Pulikovsky was stunned by the opulent lifestyle he found on board Kim's private train, originally a gift to his father from Stalin.
The general writes: "Every day on board we would discuss the menu for the next day. Kim suggested doing so, saying that he had great cooks, who were educated in France. One could order any dish from Russian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese and French cuisine. Usually the menu he chose consisted of 15-20 dishes.
"Kim can be called a gourmet. One feels that he knows things about cookery, but he is quite modest and moderate in eating food. He would take a bit of everything, as if to taste."
Pulikovsky says Kim uses silver chopsticks but is equally adept with a knife and fork. He is also handy with a wine glass.
"He said that his doctors had recommended him to drink half a bottle of good red wine a day. He prefers bordeaux and burgundy. A consignment of these wines was delivered from Paris for his train journey."
Food was delivered to the train in large containers. When they arrived in Omsk, their first stop in Siberia, the Koreans asked for lorries. It turned out that a plane had landed in Omsk from North Korea with fresh food. This was repeated during the journey.
Once, Pulikovsky noticed rock lobster on the menu and asked to see it. "Kim said something to the waiter, and he brought this exotic seafood on a big dish.
"On the tray there was a half-lobster-half-crawfish of inspiring size with a big tail. I touched it. It straightened its claws and moved — it was alive. I suppose that the Koreans were cooking everything from fresh, natural, unfrozen produce. The next day we tasted this rock lobster. The exotic became quite edible for me."
Pulikovsky and the North Korean talked for several hours a day throughout the long journey, which lasted from July 26 to August 18 and took them from the Korean border through Russia's "wild east" to the Baltic Sea and back again. Pulikovsky found him an amusing and entertaining companion.
"Kim's interests are very wide," says the general. "He has a sense of humour, and his jokes are funny — they made me smile.
"We talked a lot, sometimes on absolutely unexpected themes. For example, from him I learnt that beautiful Russian girls work in the Lido cabaret in Paris. About 80% of the girls there are Russian.
"He said he received this information from employees of the North Korean embassy in France. He added that there are also Chinese girls there, but Russian girls are more beautiful."
During a party on the train to celebrate Korean freedom day, "four very beautiful girls dressed in the uniform of railway guards" sang for Kim in "gorgeous voices". The North Korean railway minister said they really were train officials, but Pulikovsky concluded that they were professional actresses.
They were also grittier conversations. Kim told Pulikovsky he was worried about drug addiction in North Korea. He had ordered the execution of drug peddlers and addicts and "the beating of Chinese who helped in the distribution of drugs".
Pulikovsky says Kim told him: "If you see any Korean drug addicts, I permit you — execute them."
Kim also mentioned the "plague of the 20th century", saying that he absolutely did not believe media reports about huge numbers of people being sick with Aids in Africa.
"This is just impossible!" he exclaimed, according to Pulikovsky. "Many countries are exaggerating the extent of their troubles to get more international aid."
The general noticed the extreme deference with which Kim was treated by the people close to him. "When they entered his compartment, they bent down in a deep bow and stayed like that until he made a barely perceptible sign that they could stand up straight again."
Kim was almost always attended by North Korean cameramen, and Pulikovsky concluded that "his time in Russia would become the basis for another film about the Great Commander".
Kim seemed to shrug off his international image. According to Pulikovsky, he said: "Throughout the whole world I'm the object of criticism. But I think about it this way: if I'm talked about I'm going about things the right way."
He was keen to see the effects of economic reforms in Russia. He said he had also been studying the changes in China.
"Kim saw the advantages of private ownership, but he kept on saying that this is impossible in his own country. About 25m people live in the small territory. To feed them all one needs a totalitarian system," writes the general.
In a big shopping mall in Khabarovsk, he was excited to see men's shoes from Italy and Spain on sale. He was surprised that anybody could afford the most expensive, which cost the equivalent of Ï240.
The shop assistants still talk about his visit more than a year later, according to Pulikovsky, "but for some reason mostly they remember his own high-heel shoes with sharply pointed toes".
The general — who reveals that the presidential train always had other locomotives running several minutes ahead and behind it to protect it from trouble, including ramming — scoffs at the "fantasies" in the press about Kim's reasons for travelling by rail rather than plane.
Kim told him he was doing so partly to see how people were living a decade after the end of the Soviet Union and partly to follow in the footsteps of his father, Kim Il-sung, who had followed the same route long ago.
He said such a visit had been impossible before, because he "didn't sympathise much with previous leaders who had come to power since Stalin died" in 1953. In Russia's current president, Vladimir Putin, however, he saw "a strong, firm, powerful leader whom people will follow".
He and Pulikovsky spent some time watching videos of military parades in Moscow and Pyongyang, the North Korean capital.
"Kim considers that military power should be demonstrated regularly so that people can see the army and know that it can defend its citizens in case of aggression," says the general.
Pulikovsky, who commanded Russian forces in Chechnya, adds approvingly: "I used to take part in many military parades . . . People really do like parades, since they show the power of the state."
At the end of the trip, Kim proposed handing out $1,000 (Ï640) "bonuses" to Russian officials and $300 to bodyguards. "I started to say that he should not do this, but Kim kept insisting. I told him, 'Even if your bodyguards secretly put the dollars in our pockets, we will hand them over to the presidential management office in Moscow'." The general ended up with an embroidered Korean wall panel.
He saw Kim again last February while visiting Korea to celebrate the eastern new year. The president, who was "lively, communicative and smiling", suddenly started singing a famous Soviet song, Wide My Motherland Is, in a magnificent baritone.
Pulikovsky and other Russians present hurried to catch up with the song, "but by the second verse some of us were stumbling, hardly remembering the words of the Soviet classic. We were filled with emotion, listening to Wide My Motherland Is performed with scarcely an accent by maybe one of the biggest and most mysterious leaders of the eastern world".
Regards, Ivan
Regards, Ivan
Regards, Ivan
Formaldehyde will do nicely
Semper Fi
Just like Jeffrey Dahmer!
Devil King of the "Progressives" ping.
Sick Mofo.
Let's airdrop half a million loaded .25 caliber Raven pocket pistols on North Korea as a Christmas gift to its citizens.
Then see if that fat little queer marches in any 'military parades' after that.
They are... sort of. It's kind of like "what the meaning of 'is' is."
Kim eats rock lobster...
North Koreans eat rocks,
and there is even more of those nutrition minerals in those than in lobster!
He is neither.
NGO reports smuggled out of North Korea document childen pawing through dung--looking for undigested beans. Kim has kidnapped women to perform as his sex slaves. Torture is standard operating procedure for his security detail.
Interesting quip from the Russian General that they would not take Kim's hard currency. This certainly was not my experience in the former Soviet Union. We used to have to pay for our aircraft fuel in cold, hard greenbacks--and every official took their "cut"--or else service was denied.
One time in Lvov, we were delayed hours by officials, until we negotiated. I finally agreed to sign for a $2500 "towing fee"--even though our aircraft was not towed. After exchanges of funds and forms, the airport management brought forth a woman and hinted she would sexually service my crew.
Thanks, but no thanks.
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