He bought them cars, weapons, expensive furniture and the finest food –all while their people starved.
Col. Kim Jong Ryul says he spent two decades traveling to European cities on shopping spree-missions for North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim il Sung, and then later for his son, Kim Jong Il.
Helping to lift the shroud on North Korea’s brutal and mysterious regime, the German-speaking Kim claims to have bought luxury cars, carpets and gold-plated handguns with cash sent from Pyongyang. He says Mercedes was the favorite brand of the leadership, but they also liked Lincolns and Cadillacs. He also obtained furnishings for the leaders’ numerous villas, and he bought food, food, and more food.
That’s what really got to Kim. “People were dying of starvation,” he told Fox News, “and they were eating food from all over the world.”
The North Koreans were also building up their stockpile of weapons, and Kim helped by buying arms, planes and spy gear. He got around embargoes, he says, by paying top dollar and then some to eager European businessmen.
Where did impoverished North Korea get the money?
“For that they didn’t save,” he said. “Always the money came.”
In the mid 1990s, angry about North Korean policies, Kim faked his death and went into hiding for 15 years in a small Austrian village. Why did he do it? “Number one, for freedom,” he said.
Now, at 75, and at great risk to himself and his family still in North Korea, he’s decided to go public. Working with two Austrian journalists, who’ve checked his claims, he’s come out with a book entitled, “In the Service of Dictators.”
His assessment of Kim Jong Il: “He is human. But the political ideas inside his head are of the devil.”
Kim dismisses Pyongyang’s nuclear saber- rattling as “propaganda,” and he has a message for the U.S. in how to deal with the North Korean regime: “Destroy it.”
Kim is now seeking asylum in Austria, where police are already keeping a close watch over him. Considering North Korea’s history in dealing with dissidents, that’s a good thing.