Kim Jong Il mixes bling, extreme safety on train

[Elmore Furth]

At one point Kim Jong Il banned secretaries from wearing hairpins in his office, fearing they might be used to assassinate him. Don't laugh. When you are a babe magnet, you can't be too careful.

When the "Dear Leader" hits the road for one of his rare trips outside North Korea, he doesn't take chances. And he certainly doesn't take jet planes.

Shrouded in secrecy, excursions like this week's train trip to Beijing have all the markings of Kim Jong Il's eccentric rule: logistics nuanced by enough bling to serve a seven-star hotel, and risk resistance bordering on the obsessive.

On previous trips, there hasn't been just one train, but three. South Korean intelligence reports say the mystery entourage has included two dummy trains to confuse any would-be attacker. This time, Kim is reported to have taken only one.


(There's nothing new here but) That hasn't prevented South Korean and Japanese media from bird-dogging the train. Camera crews that captured shots of Kim leaving the luxury Furama Hotel in Dalian on Tuesday were briefly detained by police and asked to delete images and video, according to Associated Press Television News, which had personnel detained.

Kim Jong Il mixes bling, extreme safety on train

[harry_pothead]

1. Is his train called the "Page Not Found?"

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/asia/la-fg-kim-train-20100505,0,1455665.story