Tuesday, February 06, 2007

CHINA has secretly harboured the eldest son of North Korean dictator Kim
Jong-il in Macau for three years, despite the US-led crackdown on North
Korea's finances in the former Portuguese colony, local reports say. Kim
Jong-nam, the North Korean leader's eldest son and former heir apparent, has
been living with his family in Macau, dividing his time between five-star
hotels and a family villa, the South China Morning Post reported yesterday
citing a six-week investigation. The newspaper said the younger Kim had made
Macau his home, and was not just a frequent visitor as previously thought.
In contrast to the deprived conditions, and in some cases starvation,
suffered by most North Korean citizens, Mr Kim spends much of his time
wining, dining and gambling in Macau's growing number of casinos and slot
machine parlours, and travels frequently to the mainland and abroad using
passports from the Dominican Republic and Portugal, the paper said.
The rotund younger Kim hit the headlines in 2001 when he was deported from
Japan after trying to enter with his wife and then four-year-old son on a
fake passport, apparently to visit Tokyo Disneyland. The humiliation led his
father Kim Jong-il to cancel a planned visit to China. Macau, like
neighbouring Hong Kong, is a special administrative region of China and as
such enjoys limited autonomy. But there is little doubt that Beijing would
be aware of Mr Kim's presence in Macau as North Korea is such a touchy
issue. "He's been on the move for much of the decade but Macau is the place
he calls home now," a source familiar with Mr Kim's movements told the South
China Morning Post. "He's been free to stay as long as he lives quietly. He
believes he is among friends and he appears to be happy."
Macau has been a key conduit for North Korean financial dealings for more
than 40 years, but in November 2005 the Macau Government froze $US24 billion
($A31.7 billion) in North Korean-linked accounts at the request of the US
Treasury, which said they were used for money laundering. The financial bans
strangled Kim Jong-il's cash flow and North Korea angrily blamed them for
the breakdown of talks. If confirmed, the news that China has been
harbouring Kim Jong-il's son is likely to embarrass Beijing, which has been
under intense international pressure to use its much vaunted influence to
pull North Korea back into line after it tested its first nuclear device
last October. China voted in favour of unprecedented Security Council
sanctions against North Korea after the October 9 nuclear test and North
Korea eventually agreed to return to six-party talks in December. These are
due to resume in Beijing next Wednesday.

Under the deal brokered by China last year to resume the stalled talks, the
US agreed to hold separate meetings with North Korea on the Macau bank
accounts.

The latest talks on this issue ended in Beijing on Wednesday but afterwards
a source told Reuters that the North Koreans might threaten to conduct a
second nuclear test at the resumption of six-party talks next week if the US
did not lift the Macau financial bans.