Kim Jong Nam’s Bachelor Pad Burgled, and How the Other Side Lives
The Zhuyuan Haoyuan villa complex is 15 minutes from downtown Macau and its 80 villas are among the territory’s most exclusive. The average price of each villa is estimated HK$15 million, roughly US$1.92 million. Yellow sunflower symbols adorning the doors of nos. 361 and 371 easily identify them as Kim Jong-nam’s. [Chosun Ilbo]
If Kim Jong Nam is really estranged from his father, you really have to wonder where this money came from. Meanwhile, the Daily NK reports on the lifestyles and the deepest fears of Pyongyang’s rich and famous:
Overall, there are about 4 millions members in the North Korean Workers’ Party (statistics as of 1995), this being roughly 20% of the population. Retrospectively, these people control the 23mn North Korean citizens.
The central class incorporating junior secretaries to the party, training officers, novice elites, generals from the army, safety and protection agents use their power position to control directly the North Korean people.
….
The Kim Jong Il regime gives privileges to inspire the people supporting them. For example, people who work for the Central Committee systems department or the elite propagandists, receive a Mercedes Benz with the number plate “˜2.16′ symbolizing Kim Jong Il’s own birthday, and depending on the position, the car series is upgraded.
Other elites from the Central Committee and figures in key military posts are provided with luxurious apartments in Pyongyang. The apartment blocks are built and located separately to the average house. Soldiers guard the homes, even restraining relatives from entering the apartment premises. These homes are furnished with electrical goods, sofas, food and goods made in Japan, as well as being accompanied with western culture.
As Military First Politics was implemented in the late 90’s, private nurses, full-time house maids, private apartments and country residences, private cars, office cars, as well as “recreational clubs” with beautiful women, were granted as privileges to the head military and provincial officers.
This is the sort of obscene wealth disparity that one only sees in rapidly developing economies — where such disparities tend to self-correct with time — and in totalitarian societies that deny their people economic freedom and mobility. It evokes the last days of the French monarchy. And we all know, as the North Korean ruling class knows, that the resentment of the poor could lead to a horrible wave of vengeance after this monarchy falls, as it will one day.