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.
8. CUBA’S CASANOVA
Cuba is a sexy place. Forget baseball, sex is Cuba’s national sport. It is the only real escape from the hardships of daily life. Promiscuity and extramarital sex are rife. Partners are swapped so often that few bother to get married. In 1989, 61.2 per cent of babies were born out of wedlock and there are over 160,000 abortions a year, a third of them performed on teenagers.
Posadas — so-called “lovers” hotels — are everywhere. For five pesos, the equivalent of fifty U.S. cents, you get three hours of privacy. When your time is up, the phone rings and someone on the other end says: “Turno.”
Prostitution is widespread, overt and mostly amateur. Women will go to bed for a bottle of shampoo or a new pair of jeans. Businessmen in their sixties can be seen with beautiful brown-skinned girls young enough to be their granddaughters.