Overthrowing Kim and the Aftermath

Before the Great Famine, the North Koreans had Thanksgiving, too.  The Korean harvest holiday is called chuseok, and in South Korea, it means that millions of cars clog the highways carrying people to visit and feast with their relatives.  In North Korea, there are no traffic jams, no traffic, few travel passes, and for most of the people, there’s little to feast on, so Chuseok has become a modest celebration.  Still, the idea of inviting a North Korean family to Thanksgiving may have caused me a greater sense of irony than it did my guests, Kim Kwang Jin and his family.  Before he and his family defected in 2003, Kim had been a trusted member of North Korea’s Inner Party:  a graduate of Kim Il Sung University who had studied English literature, married a general’s daughter, and obtained a prized job that allowed him to travel abroad.  Kim Kwang Jin’s particular job was buying insurance — specifically, reinsurance policies from large international insurance companies — and then collecting payouts after catastrophic “accidents” that only North Korean authorities would be allowed to investigate.  The policies later became the subject of much litigation, and Mr. Kim has since revealed to The Washington Post that they were actually a global insurance fraud scheme.  This was just one of many ways Kim Jong Il sustained his regime with foreign currency.