Kim Jong-Un has a penchant for French wine and boasted about drinking “10 bottles of Bordeaux” in one night, according to the Kim family’s former Sushi chef.
Kenji Fujimoto, a Japanese chef who claims to have known the Kims since 1982, disclosed details of a dinner he had shared with the North Korean dictator, revealing his fondness for indulgent food and drink.
Mr Fujimoto, who visited North Korea in April, told South Korean network KBS Kim Jong-Un appeared at the dinner with six attractive women and drank expensive Bordeaux wine, before boasting about drinking “10 bottles of Bordeaux" in one night just days before.
The chef claims to have personally catered for the Kims’ for 13 years. In 2001, he fled to Japan – while he was supposed to be buying Sushi ingredients – and has built a career writing books about his past employers.
Despite claiming his life was in danger, Mr Fujimoto has paid several trips back to North Korea over the last decade.
As well as his love of fine wine, Kim Jong-Un is reputed to be a heavy smoker and a massive fan of Swiss cheese, particularly Emmental.
In 2014, he dispatched North Korean officials to a French culinary school to learn the art of cheese-making after he became frustrated by his chefs’ inability to properly replicate the European flavours, according to international news agency UPI.
Kim Jong-Un’s alleged gluttony has fuelled rumours that he suffers from high blood sugar, gout and diabetes.
Speculation over his heath peaked in 2014, when he failed to appear in public for three weeks and missed a session of the supreme people’s assembly - North Korea’s national legislature.
Earlier this year, Kim Jong-Un was pictured smoking a cigarette during a public visit to a children’s camp in Pyongyang, despite the country being in the midst of an anti-smoking campaign, the BBC reports.
Kim’s father Kim Jong-Il and grandfather Kim Il-Sung both suffered from obesity and gout and they also smoked. Kim’s father and grandfather both died from heart attacks.
Although the vast majority of North Korea’s 25 million citizens endure the threat of starvation, obesity is a growing problem among North Korean kids and teenagers from elite families.
