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).
This while his starving people are literally eating tree bark.
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