Sex Lives of the Great Dictators

7. THE PLEASURE PENINSULA

North Korea’s “beloved leader” from the Communist take-over in 1945 to his death in 1995, Kim I1-sung, was a well-known womanizer even during his exile in Manchuria. His first wife was Kim Jong-suk. She had lived with her parents, slash-and-burn farmers in Jiande, China, until 1935. Then, at the age of sixteen, she was picked up by a Chinese Communist guerrilla unit. She was assigned to Kim Il-sung, who kept her barefoot, as a cook and seamstress. She also worked as one of his bodyguards. In 1942, she gave birth to his son and successor, Kim Chong-il, in a military base in Siberia.

When Kim Il-sung took over the Communist paradise of North Korea, he enjoyed intimate relations with innumerable women including movie actresses, dancers, professional models, his own secretaries, good-looking nurses and kisaeng girls — the Korean equivalent of geishas. Having absolute power in this secretive, closed country, he did not have to bother with seduction. He simply had his henchmen kidnap anyone he wanted.

When any North Korean was asked how many children Kim Il-sung had, the answer would always be: “We are all his children.”

Kim Jong-suk meekly accepted her husband’s womanizing. He also mistreated her. She died in 1949, at the age of thirty-two. The rumours at the time were that she shot herself or was poisoned. The official announcement was that she had died of a heart attack. Soon after her death, Kim Il-sung married Kim Song-ae, a beautiful woman twenty years his junior. She was already pregnant with their child, Kim Pyong-il.

Like father, like son — only more so. Kim Chong-il, who was groomed to take over from his father when he died in the first dynastic succession in the Communist world, inherited his father’s taste for women. While working in the General Bodyguard Bureau, Kim Chong-il married Hong II-chon. She was the daughter of a revolutionary and studied literature at Kimilsung University. They had a daughter.

But Kim Chong-il was not faithful to her; and he beat her. They divorced in 1973. It was also in 1973 that Kim Il-sung named Kim Chong-il as his successor. He appointed his son to the politburo and made him Minister for Propaganda and Art. That same year Kim Chong-il married a typist. They went on to have a son and two daughters. His second wife remains his official consort, but she is far from being the only woman on the scene.

In the early 1970s, Kim Chong-il had sex with a nineteen-year-old movie star called Sun Hye-rim. She was the wife of Li Pyong, the brother of one of Kim Chong-il’s school friends. When Sun Hye-rim became pregnant, the Party intervened and Li Pyong was forced to divorce her. The relationship between Kim Chong-il and Sun Hye-rim continued, though Sun Hye-rim and their illegitimate son, Kim Jung-nam, went to live in Moscow. Kim Chong-il has at least seven other illegitimate children from similar encounters.

A singer from the Pyongyang Art Troupe drowned herself in the Daedong River after an affair with Kim Chong-il in the late 1970s. Several other women have committed suicide after he abandoned them.

He had an affair with Son Nui-rim, the sister of the North Korean ambassador to Russia. They had two daughters, but he discarded her when she became mentally ill in 1991. She was moved to Moscow, where she is cared for by her father.

Another long-term lover was Li Sang-jin, who was his classmate at Kimilsung University. She was married to a Foreign Ministry official, according to diplomatic sources.

The famous Korean movie actress Hong Yung-hui was introduced to Kim Chong-il by an aide who knew his boss’s tastes. Consenting to become his mistress earned her the leading role in the revolutionary opera A Flowerselling Maiden and she was designated “a people’s actress” — the highest accolade that the profession can bestow. She also acted as hostess at his parties and eventually married a man that Kim Chong-il picked out for her.

In 1990, he seduced the nineteen-year-old daughter of the director of the North Korean Judo Association. She was a member of the Mansudae Art Troupe and produced another daughter for Kim Chong-il.

In May 1991, a new actress, a twenty-year-old named Chung Hye-sun, appeared in a leading role in a drama series, Skylark, on Pyongyang’s Central TV station. She bore an uncanny likeness to Kim Chong-il’s mother, Kim Jong-suk. Kim Chong-il had her installed in a luxurious villa near Mount Daesung in an exclusive suburb of Pyongyang. She now drives around in a MercedesBenz that he provided.

But Kim Chong-il was not always so kind. He had one lover, pretty young actress Wu In-hui, executed by firing squad in front of a crowd of five thousand. She had been charged with having affairs with other men, against Kim Chong-il’s specific instructions.

However, Kim Chong-il’s real passion is for foreign relations. In 1991, he invited a number of female Russian singers and bands to North Korea. They were paid large sums of foreign currency to perform for him at his villa. A Russian girl and her vocal group, who were employed to amuse Kim Chong-il at his villa during Kim 11-Bung’s eightieth birthday celebrations, reportedly had group sex with him and his aides. Scandinavian women have also been offered large sums of money to attend Kim Chong-il at his villa.

But Kim Il-sung and Kim Chong-il’s crowning achievement was to turn the entire Korean Communist Party into a huge pimping system. Women were recruited from all over the country and assigned to various “song and dance”, “happiness” and “satisfaction” teams. They were housed in secluded villas for the exclusive use of Kim Il-sung and Kim Chong-il.

Each of these different “pleasure” teams had its own function. As its name suggests, the “song and dance” teams would sing, play musical instruments and dance for the Kims. The “happiness” teams relieved their fatigue by means of massage, while the “satisfaction” teams provided sexual fulfilment. At any one time, there were about two thousand young women in these pleasure teams, housed in villas or special hotels around the country.

The General Bodyguard Bureau was in charge of recruitment. Selection teams, appointed by local branches of the Communist Party, picked out good-looking women around the age of twenty and over the height of 5 feet 3 inches. The girls had to have a “pure ideological and social background”. Once picked for a pleasure team, a woman had no option but to accept, even if her parents were Party officials; she was not allowed to complain.

Candidates were also selected annually from the students of city and provincial art colleges. One eighteen-year-old student studying music at Kimhyonjik Teachers” College was forcibly “enrolled” as a member of a pleasure team around 1980. She was sent to Pyongang Music and Dance University to study the violin before being assigned to a “song and dance” team. Another girl, on her way home from work, was enrolled off the streets by a Party official. Around 1989, the National Sports Commission was instructed to provide ten girls from the gymnastics team to become pleasure-team members. Later foreign women were recruited from Hong Kong, Macao and the Middle East. Some were paid; others were simply kidnapped. They were confined to villas and gave up all hope of returning home.

Once local Party organizations had supplied their annual crop of recruits, Central Party Headquarters sorted out the most promising candidates to send to the Namsan Dispensary, where they underwent rigorous physical and ideological examination.

The selection of “happiness” teams first began when a special one year course in massage was organized at the Red Cross hospital in Pyonyang. Thirty young women were enrolled. Later, “happiness” team members were sent to the Soviet Union for training, before being assigned to one of the Kims” residences.

The “satisfaction” teams and “song and dance” teams were given six months” training. They had to perform every Saturday night at parties hosted by Kim Chong-il. Each party had a geographical theme — Tokyo night, Parisian night, Persian night, Indian night — and the teams had to act as if they came from those places.

After six months in the pleasure teams, the women were promoted to the rank of second lieutenant in the General Bodyguard Bureau and sent abroad for two weeks.

Members of pleasure teams lived in luxurious quarters and ate only the best food imported from Japan. Those who had sexual contact with Kim Il-sung or Kim Chong-il were presented with a Swiss watch with their partner’s name engraved on it. Special favourites were given cars and were, it was said, treated better than cabinet ministers.

Pleasure-team members had to serve until they were twenty-five, when they were allowed to marry bodyguard officers or holders of national-merit medals. They were, of course, instructed to keep quiet about their pleasure team activities, but everyone knew what was going on. When pleasure-team members were allowed home visits, Kim Chong-il would alert local Party members who would treat the girl like a princess.

Towards the end of his life, Kim Il-sung made an even more sinister use of this system of recruitment. The Party were instructed to supply him with young virgins. They were forced to donate blood which would be transfused into Kim Il-sung’s body in the hope that it would prolong his life.