This Is The Dirty Little Secret That Keeps Kim Jong-Un Fat And Extremely Rich… While His Country Starves

At one point in 2014, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un had not been seen in public for over a month due to what was described as an "indisposed condition." The full explanation for his sudden and mysterious absence was equally hilarious and insane… even by North Korean standards.

The generally accepted explanation was that at some point, Kim fractured both ankles while walking in his high-heel-lifted shoes. Kim's ankles reportedly collapsed under his own weight, which had ballooned more than 60 pounds in a few months, up to 280 pounds, due to a dangerous over-consumption of chocolate and cheese. I'm not kidding.

As hilarious as this all sounds, please keep in mind that Kim Jong-Un is still the head of an extremely evil dictatorship that has an absolutely abhorrent human rights record. Furthermore, while Kim is gorging on chocolates, cheese, and who knows what else, the vast majority of his own people are literally starving to death. Since taking power in 2011, Kim has ballooned in weight, wealth, and ego—largely thanks to a shadowy, mafia-like slush fund called Office 39, which is still thriving despite years of international sanctions. Think of it as North Korea's version of the IRS… if the IRS also smuggled gold, printed fake hundred-dollar bills, ran cybercrime rings, and sold crystal meth.

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How Did All These Crazy Little Kims Come To Power In the First Place?

A very brief history of Korea: Prior to the 1900s, the area known as Korea today (North and South) spent many centuries dominated by Chinese rulers. In 1904, a war erupted between Russia and Japan over the areas of Manchuria and Korea. Russia wanted to acquire a Naval base in the warmer waters of the Pacific Ocean that could be operated year-round, unlike their primary base at the time, which was only operational during the summer due to cold weather the rest of the year.

Japan surprised the world by not only resisting Russia's ambitions but essentially destroying them in a war that lasted 1 year and 6 months. A combined 150,000 Russian and Japanese soldiers died during the war. Another 150,000 were wounded. The peace treaty that ended the war was mediated by US President Teddy Roosevelt on an American Naval island off the coast of Maine on September 5, 1905. In the peace treaty, Russia agreed to recognize Korea as part of the Japanese world-sphere. Korea was officially annexed by Japan five years later, in 1910.

After the annexation took place, Japan immediately began suppressing Korean traditions and culture. The Japanese also set about to plunder Korea's natural resources as their own economic piggy bank. Violent student uprisings starting in 1929 led to military rule beginning in 1931. In 1937, World War II began, and the Sino-Japanese War broke out. At this point, Japanese rule in Korea became even more violent and strict. Koreans were forced to adopt Japanese names and worship at Japanese temples. The Korean language was eliminated from schools. And as horrendously unbelievable as this sounds, over 200,000 Korean girls and women were forced into sexual slavery to service Japanese soldiers and factory workers. They were called "comfort women".

Aftermath of WWII – Kim Il-Sung Comes To Power

As bombs were being dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the Soviet army was fighting their way into Pyongyang. When the Japanese finally surrendered on August 15, 1945, they were forced to adopt a pacifist constitution that prohibited them from owning things like aircraft carriers even to this day. They were also forced to give up colonial territories like Korea and Manchuria.

And mimicking exactly what happened in Berlin, at the end of the war, Korea was split into two occupied territories. The newly created "North Korea" would be occupied by the Soviet Union, and the newly created "South Korea" would be occupied by the US.

On December 17, 1945, the Soviet army put an anti-Japanese guerrilla war leader named Kim Il-Sung in charge of the Korean Communist Party. A few months later, Kim II-Sung was officially placed in charge of the entire country. Kim Il-Sung then proceeded to embark on a decades-long strategy of nationalizing North Korean industry and land. He would eventually become North Korea's autocratic, all-powerful child of God and Supreme Leader. His eldest son, Kim Jong-Il, took power upon his father's death in 1994. Kim Jong-Il ruled until his own death in 2011, at which point he was succeeded by his youngest son, the current Supreme Leader Kim Jong-Un.

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"Office 39" – Where The Money Comes From

According to more than a dozen North Korean defectors with first-hand experience, the ruling family has set aside a multi-billion dollar fortune thanks to an innocuous-sounding shadowy operation known as "Office 39". Also referred to as "Room 39", this secretive government network was established in the late 1970s by Kim Jong-Il. The entire purpose of Office 39 is to generate and maintain a large foreign currency slush fund for the Supreme Leader of North Korea.

US officials have long accused Office 39 of being nothing more than a money laundering operation that generates revenue from the sale of illegal arms, drugs (most notably crystal meth and opiates), and counterfeit currency (mainly fake $100 US dollar bills). Office 39 has also been accused of widespread international insurance fraud and even reportedly owns a chain of restaurants called "Pyongyang" with more than a dozen locations in places like Indonesia, Vietnam, Kuala Lumpur, Beijing, and Shanghai. The organization controls many of its "legal" businesses through a holding company called the Daesong Group. The Daesong Group sells an estimated 10 tons of gold that is lifted from the North Korean rivers and mines each year. The gold is then flown to Vienna or China by private jet and sold off brick by brick.

In fact, by 2020, the U.S. Justice Department had traced over $2.5 billion laundered through a network of over 250 front companies and covert bank branches in places like Thailand, Libya, and Russia. These entities were all secretly working under the umbrella of North Korea's Foreign Trade Bank and Office 39 to keep Kim's nuclear and luxury shopping sprees funded. Investigators even found detailed instructions telling banks to strip all information that might link transactions back to North Korea. Translation: "Here's a pile of illegal money—please pretend it came from Switzerland."

A 2007 report by the United Nations estimated that Office 39 generates $500 million to $1 billion a year from its various criminal enterprises. A 2010 report by the US Treasury Department estimated that Office 39 generates several billion illicit dollars every year. In March 2013, a joint South Korean and American investigation found as much as $5 billion worth of assets and bank accounts controlled by Kim Jong-Un and his family. These assets were found in more than 200 foreign bank accounts located throughout the world in countries including Austria, Lichtenstein, Russia, Singapore, China, Switzerland, and Luxembourg. Many of these accounts are located in China and reportedly contain hundreds of millions of dollars in cold, hard cash.

Crypto Theft

As international sanctions tightened, North Korea didn't exactly slow down. They just got more creative. Office 39 and its partners have ramped up everything from cyber bank heists to cryptocurrency theft. In 2016, North Korean hackers nearly made off with $1 billion from Bangladesh's central bank using fake SWIFT transfer codes. In the following years, they allegedly stole over $500 million in cryptocurrency from exchanges in South Korea and Japan. Turns out, when you're banned from selling coal and seafood, hacking Bitcoin wallets becomes Plan B.

Aside From Cheese and Chocolate, Where Does The Money Go?

One of the biggest legacies Kim Jong-Il left behind wasn't ideology—it was dozens of palatial residences, including ski resorts, golf courses, private islands, and compounds with their own train stations and underground bunkers. He also passed along billions in foreign bank accounts, some in Switzerland and Austria, others hidden in shell companies and Chinese banks. U.S. and South Korean investigators uncovered over 200 foreign accounts tied to the Kim family, many with hundreds of millions in cold hard cash.

Starting around 2010, for the first time in history, higher-quality satellites began shedding light on the Hermit Kingdom. Long-believed rumors that Kim Jong-Il owned dozens of luxury homes throughout North Korea started to be proven true. A project led by a group called "North Korea Economy Watch" slowly began cataloging all the various mansions they could find through Google Earth. The Kim family real estate portfolio reportedly owns more than a dozen properties, including a high-rise luxury beach resort, a ski chalet, lakefront mansions with yachts, a golf resort, a mountain palace, and even a summer home with a water-slide pool. It's probably safe to assume that all of these residences have a very large storage area set aside for vast quantities of chocolate and cheese. It's also probably safe to assume that none of these residences contain fitness centers.

Between 2012 and 2017, the Kim regime reportedly spent over $4 billion on luxury imports—everything from yachts and racehorses to Rolexes and cases of Hennessy. One U.S. government report found that in a single year (2012), nearly 20% of North Korea's total imports were luxury items. Meanwhile, the average North Korean subsists on corn porridge and hope.

So there you have it. Now you understand why many people consider North Korea to be nothing more than a mafia-like criminal organization. A criminal organization that generates billions of dollars per year for fewer than a dozen people. A criminal organization that also happens to control a geographical area roughly the size of the state of Pennsylvania. A criminal organization that generates its money off the blood of roughly 25 million people who are so starved for nutrition that the average North Korean citizen is now three inches shorter than the average South Korean citizen.

In 2020, the U.S. went after 33 North Korean bankers for laundering billions. It was one of the largest global enforcement cases of its kind. And while the world is slowly closing in on Kim's cash flow, Office 39 hasn't disappeared—it's just gone digital. Whether it's black-market gold, ransomware crypto schemes, or fake medicine during a pandemic (yes, that's real too), Kim Jong-Un's slush fund is alive and well. The rest of North Korea? Still starving. Still oppressed. Still stuck supporting a royal family with a yacht collection. Now, if you'll excuse me, for some reason, I have a serious hankering for some cake.