Pianos, cars and a 1,000 person private theatre: How North Korean tyrant Kim Jong-un blew £386MILLION in just a year while his people starved

North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un's explosive spending on luxury items including pianos, cars and a 1,000-person private theatre have been documented in the United Nations Commission of Inquiry into Pyongyang's human rights record.
Infamous for his extravagant taste and lavish lifestyle, Mr Kim took control of the North Korean regime from his father Kim Jong-il in 2012.
For that year, the commission's 374-page report found spending on luxurious goods reached $716 million (£386 million) - doubling his late father's spending of up to $333 million (£179 million) a year.

Expensive taste: Kim Jong-un had no problem spending millions on luxury items

Released on Monday after a year-long investigation into the country, the report found luxury imports into North Korea included dozens of high-end Mercedes-Benz cars,
dozens of pianos and a 1,000-person private theatre.
The Telegraph reported the theatre will be used by Mr Kim's friends and to buy the loyalty of key regime members in an attempt to secure his power base.

A former regime official who escaped said in a testimony at the UN commission, Mr Kim used cash raised from trafficking ivory from Africa to China and the underground sale of alcohol in Islamic countries.
Former US basketballer Dennis Rodman's comments that Mr Kim's lifestyle was a 'seven-star' party with free-flowing cocktails, luxury yachts and jet-skis at his private island were made after he visited Pyongyang in October last year and support the commission's claims.

Friends: Kim Jong-un and Dennis Rodman watch an exhibition basketball game in Pyongyang during the former basketballer's trip

Despite the UN's strict sanctions on North Korea in a bid to stop of flow of luxury items into the country, the report did not examine how the items were imported into the country.
In the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's most recent report in November, it stated that North Korea remains one of the 34 nations in the world needing external aid to feed its people. The agency estimates around 2.8 million 'vulnerable' people in the North face an 'ongoing struggle with undernutrition and a lack of vital protein and fat in the diet.'
The report also detailed the abuses faced by North Korean people at hands of the government, including allegations of murder, rape used as an instrument of torture, enslavement, abductions and starvation. 
Sketches of the hellish conditions of life in the North Korean prison camps emerged on Tuesday after Kim Kwang-il, a former prisoner of gulag, commissioned artists to depict his experience.
The sketches depict graphic brutality and show crimes against humanity, such as beatings and starvation. They also show prisoners resorting to eating mice and snakes and being beaten until they vomited blood.

Hell on earth: Shocking sketches showing the mistreatment of prisoners in North Korean gulags as recollected by a former prisoner

UN commission chairman Michael Kirby said leader Kim Jong-un could be held personally accountable for crimes committed by his henchmen.
Calling for the world to take action against the state, Mr Kirby, said inmates in North Korea’s prison camps suffered ‘unspeakable atrocities’, comparable to the treatment of prisoners by the Nazis during the Second World War.
The Korea Institute for National Unification estimates based on satellite imagery and first-hand testimony, between 80,000 and 120,000 people are detained in North Korean political prison camps.
The report will be debated by the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva on March 17.

DM