North Korea’s chronic food shortages are reported to be reaching levels similar to the 1994 famine that struck the isolated Asian nation, and Kim Jong-Il, the world’s best dressed hereditary communist dictator, couldn’t care less.
According to a report by North Korean affairs blog One Free Korea, the North Korean dictator was spotted in China being chauffeured in a Mercedes-Benz S600 Pullman Guard, an armored, extended-wheelbase S600 that costs $200,000 more than the Maybach limousines reportedly favored by Jong-Il.
Witnesses said that the two S600s were fitted with Beijing license plates, a common practice for vehicles exported from China to North Korea by air freight. Trade documents obtained by One Free Korea show that $3.1 million worth of unspecified European cars were exported from China to North Korea in 2010.
The blog also notes that one ton of corn costs $250 on the open market, meaning that the North Korean government could have purchased 13,000 tons of corn for its starving populace.
[Source: One Free Korea]