North Korea law: No smoking. Only wife can tell Kim to quit
SEOUL, South Korea — Nobody, except maybe his wife, dares to chastise Kim Jong Un on his home turf, even when it comes to the North Korean leader’s penchant for a smoke, including while visiting a children’s hospital.
So the adoption of a tough new law last week in North Korea that bans cigarette smoking in public places — with penalties for violators — has created a conundrum. What if Kim, who is regarded as a faultless deity in North Korea, breaks that law?
For years, North Korea has urged its people to quit smoking, posting no-smoking signs on public buildings and starting a national anti-smoking website. And for years, despite a family history of smoking-related illnesses, Kim has puffed away, contradicting the admonition his underlings have given everyone else.
The new “tobacco-prohibition law,” unanimously adopted by the Supreme People’s Assembly on Wednesday, makes that contradiction even more brazen.
The law “stipulates the rules which all the institutions, organizations and citizens must follow in protecting the lives and health of the people and providing more cultured and hygienic living environments,” the North’s official Korean Central News Agency said Thursday. It applies to such public spaces as theaters, schools and hospitals.
According to South Korean and U.S. officials who have met Kim, no one in the country, with the possible exception of his wife, Ri Sol Ju, can tell him to quit.
The totalitarian “Supreme Leader” of the isolated nation is considered incapable of error and above the law. People are taught to treat him as godlike. Schoolchildren and
soldiers regularly sing a patriotic ode to the Kim family, “No Motherland Without You!”
On North Korean state media, Kim can often be seen taking a drag of his cigarette while inspecting factories, talking with missile engineers, riding the subway and even visiting schools and children’s hospitals.
Kim’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, is still widely revered among North Koreans as the founder of their country. He often appeared in public holding a cigarette.
Since taking power in 2011, the younger Kim has tried to resemble his grandfather in looks, sporting short hair and a Mao suit. Outside analysts have speculated that Kim also gained weight to copy his grandfather ’s hulking build, as part of a propaganda strategy.
The Kim rulers in North Korea have a history of cardiovascular diseases that South Korean intelligence officials have attributed to heavy smoking, drinking and obesity. Kim Il Sung died in 1994 of heart failure. His son and successor, Kim Jong Il, suffered a stroke in 2008 and died of cardiac arrest in 2011. Kim Jong Un himself has been plagued by rumors of poor health, including diabetes,
cardiovascular trouble and ankle pains caused by his weight.
More than 46% of adult men in North Korea were smokers in 2017, according to the World Health Organization. But defectors from the country said that the percentage could be much higher, as men take to smoking in their teens as a source of entertainment in a place with few alternatives. North Korea claims that no women smoke.
According to Bob Woodward’s recent book “Rage,” when the American nuclear envoy, Andy Kim, met Kim in 2018 in Pyongyang, he saw the North Korean leader light up and told him it was bad for his health. Kim Jong Un’s top aide, Kim Yong Chol, and his sister, Kim Yo Jong, both froze. No one in North Korea ever spoke to their leader that way, except for one person. According to Woodward, quoting Andy Kim, Ri acknowledged that was right: “I’ve told my husband about the dangers of smoking,” she said.
And in July, two months after North Korea announced that it was expanding its no-smoking zone policies, Central TV showed Kim Jong Un inspecting a new general hospital under construction in Pyongyang.
He was smoking.