Kim Il Sung’s Personal Shopper Writes Tell-All Book

Kim Jong Ryul, who spent 16 years under cover in Austria, also described how the “great leader” and his son and successor Kim Jong Il spent millions pampering and protecting themselves with Western goods — everything from luxury cars, carpets and exotic foods, to monitors that can detect heartbeats of people hiding behind walls and gold-plated handguns.

The colonel’s account — told in a new book by Austrian journalists Ingrid Steiner-Gashi and Dardan Gashi — shows the deep divide between the lifestyles of the North Korean leadership and their citizens, who sometimes must subsist eating tree bark, knowing they will be sent to labor camps if they criticize the government. [AP]

Remember this story the next time you see Goebbelsian apologists like Christine Ahn or John Feffer try to blame starvation in North Korea on American anti-proliferation sanctions.