What do you get when a Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist meets the man who was a personal chef and confidant for a supreme leader? You get the inside scoop on the juicy details you have always wondered about.

Kim Jong-il’s personal sushi chef and confidant Kenji Fujimoto, got a look into the inner circle of the North Korean communist leader’s life. In an article written by Adam Johnson and published by GQ, the beans are all spilled – from the parties to the supreme leader’s favourite food.

The full article, which you can find here, is a bit lengthy so we’ve gone ahead and pulled out some of the highlights. Here are five facts about Kim.

1. He had expensive and annoying eating habits. 

It was part of Fujimoto’s job to fly North Korean jets around the world to procure dinner-party ingredients — to Iran for caviar, Tokyo for fish, or Denmark for beer. It was Fujimoto who flew to France to supply the Dear Leader’s yearly $700,000 cognac habit. And when the Dear Leader craved McDonald’s, it was Fujimoto who was dispatched to Beijing for an order of Big Macs to go.

Kim had an underground bombproof Olympic swimming pool constructed with his image emblazoned in gold tiles on the bottom. North Korean engineers had even built him a motorised boogie board.

3. He liked cooking shows

Kim Jong-il was a fan of cooking shows. Iron Chef was his favorite. When Fujimoto’s culinary travels took him to Japan, he stocked up on VHS tapes of the latest episodes so he and Shogun-sama could have long discussions about foie gras, truffles, and Kobe beef.

4. He was a huge Joy Division fan… and no we don’t mean the band.

 Young women were no longer kidnapped from other countries to be used as sex slaves. Instead, Kim Jong-il had developed his kippumjo, or “Joy Division” brigade, in which teams of beautiful North Korean girls, most forcibly recruited under the age of 16, were maintained to provide entertainment, massages, and sexual gratification.

5.  He had…OCD

Kim had also established an institute dedicated to his longevity. Its staff of 200 approved every element of Kim’s diet. Each grain of Kim’s rice was hand-inspected for chips and cracks — only perfectly shaped rice, grown in North Korea, was approved.

[Source: GQ]