Kim Jong’s comforts are probably only a decade or two behind modern (I’m speculating).
His likes are idiosyncratic, but as far as they go, he’s cutting-edge.
Cognac is routinely cited as one of the top illicit imports, and I don’t think he’s getting bad cognac; one of his principal interests is/was movies, of which he has a 20,000-strong collection—world-class, I think—and he was infamous for kidnapping ‘the famous South Korean movie director Shin Sang Ok and his ex-wife, actress Che Eun Hui, and kept them for eight years while making them produce propaganda films’, which is something which is inaccessible to just about everyone, modern or no.
He may be an evil dictator, but in my opinion he gets extreme bonus points for style:
and he was infamous for kidnapping ‘the famous South Korean movie director Shin Sang Ok and his ex-wife, actress Che Eun Hui, and kept them for eight years while making them produce propaganda films’
And from wikipedia:
From 1983 Shin directed seven films with Kim Jong-il acting as an executive producer. The best known of these films is Pulgasari, a giant-monster film similar to the Japanese Godzilla.
Not even the Bond badguys did anything that amusing.
Hmm, Kim Jong Il is apparently a bad example since he’s so wealthy. Surely there are dictators who don’t have the resources that Kim Jong has (such that they’re living in sub-modern conditions), but they still want to hold on to the power and status they hold despite the potential for wealth. right? (again, speculating, no hard evidence in mind)
Just about any nation-size dictator will be able to scratch up enough cash to live like a millionaire. Extort a few dollars from a million destitute inhabitants and you’re talking real money. So you have to look at city or tribal scale units, and even then, I think most chieftains are happier to be in power than out of power in a wealthier nation. How many Afghanistani elders are cooperating with the US, and out of enlightened self-interest, knowing that in any modernized industrial society their clans will be hopelessly obsolete? How many out of naked fear of the Taliban or US, and bribes?
His likes are idiosyncratic, but as far as they go, he’s cutting-edge.
Cognac is routinely cited as one of the top illicit imports, and I don’t think he’s getting bad cognac; one of his principal interests is/was movies, of which he has a 20,000-strong collection—world-class, I think—and he was infamous for kidnapping ‘the famous South Korean movie director Shin Sang Ok and his ex-wife, actress Che Eun Hui, and kept them for eight years while making them produce propaganda films’, which is something which is inaccessible to just about everyone, modern or no.
He may be an evil dictator, but in my opinion he gets extreme bonus points for style:
And from wikipedia:
Not even the Bond badguys did anything that amusing.
Hmm, Kim Jong Il is apparently a bad example since he’s so wealthy. Surely there are dictators who don’t have the resources that Kim Jong has (such that they’re living in sub-modern conditions), but they still want to hold on to the power and status they hold despite the potential for wealth. right? (again, speculating, no hard evidence in mind)
Just about any nation-size dictator will be able to scratch up enough cash to live like a millionaire. Extort a few dollars from a million destitute inhabitants and you’re talking real money. So you have to look at city or tribal scale units, and even then, I think most chieftains are happier to be in power than out of power in a wealthier nation. How many Afghanistani elders are cooperating with the US, and out of enlightened self-interest, knowing that in any modernized industrial society their clans will be hopelessly obsolete? How many out of naked fear of the Taliban or US, and bribes?