While it is common knowledge that Kim Jong Il and his father had a far better quality of life than the rest of the North Korean people, details of that lifestyle will be forthcoming from a man that wasn’t just close to the situation, but facilitated the dictators’ whims and guilty pleasures.
Kim Jong Ryul, a former North Korean colonel, for two decades went on extravagent shopping sprees for both Kim Jong Il, and his father Kim Il Sung. Jong Ryul in 1994 faked his death to escape North Korea and hid in Austria, and had hoped that the regime would fall in a few years. However, after 16 years he says he can’t be silent about North Korea anymore, and is detailing the regime’s hypocrisy in a book by Austrian journalists Ingrid Steiner-Gashi and Dardan Gashi.
“Without this book, I didn’t want to die,” he Jong Ryul told the Associated Press. “Now I can die with a clear conscience.”
Jong Ryul who hasn’t sought asylum in Austria says that he fears for his life.
“I’m very scared — maybe I’ll be killed, shot, in the next few days,” he said.
