When in 2006 the United States placed sanctions on North Korea, it knew how to really hit the regime where it hurt. It made it illegal to export more than sixty luxury items to North Korea, including yachts, water scooters, racing cars, motorcycles, DVD players, and televisions larger than twenty-nine inches. There would be no more silk scarves, designer fountain pens, furs, or leather luggage. These were exactly the items collected by Kim and his Communist Party elites. One scholar used sales figures from the French company Hennessy to estimate that Kim’s annual cognac budget before the
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