SEOUL, South Korea – North Korea’s rubber-stamp parliament passed a law this week that would ban smoking in public places such as theaters, schools and hospitals. But the country’s latest anti-smoking campaign, which includes fines for violators, faces a challenge: North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-un, is a regular smoker.
Over the years, North Korea has urged its people to quit smoking, posting no-smoking signs on public buildings and launching an anti-national website. And over the years, Mr. Kim has continued to stay away from smoking, despite his family history. And
The new “Tobacco-Prohibition Act”, unanimously adopted by the Supreme People’s Assembly on Wednesday, sets out the rules that must be followed by all organizations, associations and citizens to protect people’s lives and health and provide a more civilized and healthy living environment. The North’s official Korean Central News Agency said on Thursday.
According to South Korean and United States officials who met with Mr. Kim, no one in the country, except his wife, Ri Sol-joo, could ask him to resign. The authoritarian “supreme leader” of a different country is considered innocent and above the law. People teach him to think like God.
Mr. Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il-Gayela, is still widely revered among the North Korean people as the founder of his country. When he was alive, he was often seen holding a cigarette in public.
Since assuming power in 2011, Mr. Kim has tried to match his grandfather in his appearance by wearing short hair and a Mao suit. Outside analysts have speculated that Mr Kim also added weight to mimic his grandfather’s construction as part of a propaganda strategy.
Kim’s regime in North Korea has a history of cardiovascular diseases attributed to heavy smoking, drinking and obesity by South Korean intelligence officials. Kim Il-guy died of heart failure in 1994. His son and successor, Kim Jong-il, suffered a stroke in 2008 and died in 2011 of cardiac arrest. Kim Jong-un himself suffers from rumors of poor health, including diabetes, vascular dysfunction and ankle pain.
Kim Jong-un was already drinking and smoking as a teenager, according to Kenji Fujimoto, a Japanese sushi chef who served the Kim family in the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, and later shared his experiences in memoirs and interviews.
Mr Kim’s father, Kim Jong-il, launched the first antimoking campaign in North Korea. He famously said, “The three greatest idiots of the 21st century are those who can’t use a computer, can’t sing and can’t quit smoking.”
“A cigarette is like a gun pointing at your heart!” One of the opposition slogans adopted by North Korea under Kim Jong-il.
According to the World Health Organization, in 2017, more than 46 percent of adult males in North Korea were smokers. But the country’s parties said the percentage could be much higher, as men take adolescents as a source of entertainment rather than with a few options for smoking. North Korea claims that no woman smokes.
A common joke among North Korean men, according to Defectors, is that it is possible to “one day without eating, but no day without smoking.” They say packs of cigarettes are used to bribe North Korean officials.
Lifelong smoker, Kim Jong-il, quit smoking after a stroke, but resumed before he died, according to South Korean officials.
Even his son finds it difficult to kick the habit.
According to Bob Woodward’s latest book, Rage, when the American nuclear envoy, Andy Kim, met Mr. Kim in Pyongyang in 2018, he saw the North Korean leader in the spotlight and said he was unwell. Mr. Kim’s top aide, Kim Yong-chol, and his sister, Kim Yoo-jong, both stabilized. Except for one person, no one in North Korea spoke to their leader in this way. According to Mr Woodward, quoting Andy Kim, Mrs Ree admitted it was true: “I told my husband about the dangers of smoking,” she said.
And in July, two months after North Korea announced it would expand its non-smoking zone policies, Central TV showed Mr Kim inspecting a new general hospital under construction in Pyongyang.
He was smoking.
