Diverted N. Korean Food Aid Traced to Single Recipient

Update 2/5/07: The Joongang Ilbo thinks Kim Jong Nam is on the clock for his father after all:

While staying abroad, Jong-nam has been reporting back to his father on the situation here and in the United States,” the source said. “What is important is that he has been allowed by his father to make contact with people from South Korea and the United States at will.

This, from an unnamed source. It’s a terrific argument for keeping that $25 milllion frozen right where it is. There’s much more interesting Kreminology in there.

Update: The Chosun Ilbo draws this comparison (ht to Richardson):

South Korean employers pay North Korean employees in the Kaesong Industrial Complex $59 a month. North Korean authorities take 30 percent of that salary and the workers take home $41 worth of goods (not in cash). And in actual foreign exchange rate terms, the average North Korean worker makes about $1 a month. An ordinary North Korean worker must slog 460 months to cover Kim Jong-nam’s Macau hotel stay for one night, and a Kaesong worker 11 months. It’s difficult to calculate how many North Korean workers must toil and sweat to finance Kim’s gambling, drinking and shopping. How many workers must toil to support Kim Jong-chul’s tour through Europe to hear Eric Clapton?

Every cent of that Banco Delta Asia money should be put in escrow for food aid, once we have guarantees that it will go to those who actually need it. The money isn’t Kim Jong Il’s. It belongs to the people he stole it from.

Original Post: Kim Jong Il’s Disnophile son has been surfaced, living like a high roller in Macau:

CHINA has secretly harboured the eldest son of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-il in Macau for three years, despite the US-led crackdown on North Korea’s finances in the former Portuguese colony, local reports say.

Kim Jong-nam, the North Korean leader’s eldest son and former heir apparent, has been living with his family in Macau, dividing his time between five-star hotels and a family villa, the South China Morning Post reported yesterday citing a six-week investigation. The newspaper said the younger Kim had made Macau his home, and was not just a frequent visitor as previously thought.

In contrast to the deprived conditions, and in some cases starvation, suffered by most North Korean citizens, Mr Kim spends much of his time wining, dining and gambling in Macau’s growing number of casinos and slot machine parlours, and travels frequently to the mainland and abroad using passports from the Dominican Republic and Portugal, the paper said.

The nature of Kim Jong Nam’s relationship with the regime in Pyongyang is not clear. The consensus is that he is on the outs with this dad, and one report claimed that there was an attempt to assassinate him in Austria in 2004 (the Austrians denied it, which jibes with the original report that it was actually in Australia). According to another report supposedly based on leaked intel, Jong Nam occasionally exchanges drunken phone calls with other members of the royal family and some senior officials back in the Emerald City.

A Japanese reporter also claimed to have recognized Kim Jong Nam at a Beijing airport terminal and exchanged cards with him that same year. Later, the reporter claimed to have received an e-mail greeting from Jong Nam, although, as Barry Briggs at NK Zone notes, the Yahoo Korea account would have required a South Korean ID.

The presence of Kim Jong Nam as an apparently welcome guest of the Chinese raises a few interesting questions, especially in light of the fact that the man can obviously afford his choice of Chinese buffets. Does his money come from the North Korean regime, a sort of stipend for a prodigal son? Does he have some role in North Korea’s criminal enterprises, which probably still have plenty of roots and branches in Macau? This would violate the spirit of 1718, as the report suggests, but we haven’t exhausted all of the plausible options yet.

Could Jong Nam’s own enterprises have split off of the main tree along with Jong Nam himself? This one is less likely; China and Macau’s other gangsters would have little interest in tolerating another crime don in their turf, unless there was a very strong countervailing political reason to do so. There’s no such countervailing reason if Kim Jong Nam isn’t closely connected to the North Korean elite.

To me, the most interesting and most plausible speculation surrounds the possibility that China is supporting Jong Nam to groom him as a puppet to succeed Kim Jong Il (see GI Korea’s post on that topic). Now, there is one serious flaw with that theory in my mind, and it’s this: if China is serious about putting Jong Nam on the throne, I’d expect it to find more discreet places to keep him and more productive uses for his time (ie., working tours of labor camps and missile factories, courting and schmoozing vacationing NKPA generals). Instead, Jong Nam is living openly within easy view of any deviant paparazzo who wearies of stalking Gong Li and her paramours. That suggests that he’s on display — a prop meant to gain leverage over some Americans who might want him installed as a puppet, and over some North Koreans who don’t.

Whoever his money is coming from, it suggests that the Treasury Department has more work to do in untangling and snipping North Korea’s finances.

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This post wouldn’t be complete without including my wife’s observation about the cruelty of genetics:

Sorta speaks for itself, no? My four year-old, who’s sitting next to me as I write this, saw this comparison. Such an unkind child. I must speak with him about judging others by their appearance. And if you’re thinking what I’m thinking, the answers are (a) about 600 pounds, and (b) enough for a large orphanage for a year.

You can read more fascinating Kim Jong Nam facts here at Time Asia, which has a candid photo of KJN with his mother during his teens. Better yet, see Global Security’s excellent KJN Web page, which tells us that Jong Nam’s nickname is “the small general” (you’re on your own with that one). Finally, here’s a link to my “killer file” on his gay half-brother, Kim Jong Chol.

ht: James Chen — thanks, James. And kudos to the AP photographer who got that picture.