Kim Jong-un and family using spruced up ‘amusement park’ boat amid country’s food crisis – World News
Kim Jong Un is likely relaxing on his “floating amusement park” boat while North Korea grapples with famine and Covid-19.
The luxury craft has been in the dictator’s family for decades but has recently been remodelled and brought up to modern floating-flume standards.
The boat boasts twin twisting waterslides, an Olympic-sized pool and a multi-storey lounge, NK News reports.
Satellite imagery showed it docked off the private beach of Kim’s Wonsan mansion on Monday – the first time its been at the luxury property for two years.
The impressive boat’s history is shrouded in mystery, like much of the hermit kingdom.
(Image: Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images)
While the date it was completed is unknown, it has been serving the Kim family since at least 1997 when Italian pizza chef Ermanno Furlanis visited the country.
He was brought in to North Korea to cook pizza for former DPRK leader Kim Jong Il in 1997, and saw the waterslide yacht from a distance.
Ermanno described it as “a semi-mobile, floating amusement park … which was able to anchor in different places every day.”
Last year the 80m long boat was taken in for major repairs and a remodelling job, expanding the multi-story lounge.
It is said to be one of five party barges owned by Kim, who is the third member of his family to lead North Korea following its split from the South.
His fleet also includes a 95-foot yacht made by Princess Yachts, which cost around £5million according to The Drive.
While the Supreme Leader appears to have been enjoying himself on the pleasure craft, North Korea is struggling.
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For much of the pandemic Kim had insisted that the country had remained free from coronavirus by closing its borders, despite widespread scepticism.
In shutting out the rest of the world even more than before supply lines from China have been shut off, leading to mass shortages of food, fertiliser and fuel.
(Image: AFP via Getty Images)
Kim has now acknowledged that the country is facing food shortages, describing the situation as “tense”.
Last month he told citizens to prepare for the “worst ever outcome” which has invoked comparisons to a deadly famine in the 1990s.
Despite the desperate situation, Pyongyang has refused vaccines and aid from a number of countries.
Most recently North Korea has rejected planned shipments of AstraZeneca’s Covid-19 vaccine that were being organised under the global COVAX distribution scheme due to concerns over side effects, a South Korean think thank said on Friday.
COVAX has said it would provide nearly 2 million doses of AstraZeneca’s shots to North Korea.
The first batch had been expected in late May but was delayed amid protracted consultations, South Korea said last month.
