North Korea: For women in the socialist paradise of North Korea life may mean having to provide gratification for the Dear Leader. Jasper Becker reports.
The lurid private life of North Korea's dictator, Kim Jong il has taken a turn for the worse after one of his wives, ex-dancing girl Kim Yong-hee, also known as the nation's "beloved mother", crashed her Mercedes and suffered severe head injuries.
The Japanese daily, the Sankei Shimbum, says the accident, which happened last month, left the 50-year old hospitalised in a critical condition.
Until recently no one had known of her existence, but now it seems her eldest son, Kim Jong Choi, may be the heir apparent.
So many members from court circles have fled the country that the memoirs of everyone including Kim Jong Il's cook, bodyguard and hairdresser can be found in bookshops.
The most revealing are by relatives of his first wife, Sung Hae Rim, which detail an unexpected tale of romantic passion. She was a glamorous starlet when she met the portly potentate in 1970, a time when he was obsessed with films.
He had to keep their affair secret because she was the daughter of wealthy South Korean landlord, persecuted in the North as belonging to a 'hostile class'.
Sung's sister, Sung Hae Rang, wrote in her autobiography The Wisteria House, how her elder sister had pitied Kim Jong Il who, like her, had grown up motherless.
"If only fate had been kinder," she wrote "they would've made a great couple." The North's ruler forced his eldest son to marry a more suitable girl, Kim Young Sook, the daughter of a top general who produced a daughter but never appeared in public.
After Kim Il Sung's death in 1994, the relationship emerged into the open and the grandson, Kim Jong Nam, began to be groomed for succession. His odd upbringing is described by Lee Nam-ok, the daughter of Sung Hae Rang. At 13, she was called to Kim Jong Il's official residence to serve as the sole friend of Jong-nam, then eight years old.
Miss Lee, who now lives in Paris together with the son of a French intelligence officer, described their lonely life in a 1998 interview. They were never allowed to go outside except for shopping trips to Japan or Helsinki.
"We sometimes went around the city in a chauffeur-driven Benz, but we were not allowed to get out of the car," she said.
They stayed in a huge playroom stocked with every possible toy, book and film. Jong Nam's favourite bedtime reading was Anne of Green Gables. 'Even in the West I never saw such a huge collection of latest toys,' she said.
When Jong Nam became fond of a famous South Korean comedian, his father ordered officials to search the country and find a look-alike. He was then trained to deliver the act.
"Jong Nam, who was only eight at the time, knew the man was a fake," Lee wrote. "He said - I know this isn't real - then stormed off to his room." When Jong Nam reached 10, his father sent him to study at an international school in Geneva.
In 1982, his fellow student and Miss Lee's brother, Lee Il Nam, disappeared in Geneva when was 21 and resurfaced in Seoul 10 years later. After he published a book on his life in Pyongyang, unknown assailants shot him dead in the hallway of his apartment building in 1997.
In 1992 Miss Lee also fled, followed by her mother who had been living at Kim dynasty's villa in Geneva. Meanwhile, Sung Hae Rim herself gradually became terrified that Kim Jong Il's fits of rage, she fled to Moscow where she received treatment for depression. She died there in 2002, still in her mid-60s and is buried there.
Kim Jong Nam was given a job in the secret police and turns up in defector's accounts as heading a team which carried out a purge in Hyesan in 1996 in which 40 people were executed for running private businesses.
Then in 2001, Japanese police arrested him and his entourage at Nariita Airport travelling on Dominican Republic passports. He explained he just wanted to see Disneyland, but the Japanese press later described his visits to massage parlours and the unflattering judgments made by the hostess who entertained him.
The new crown prince is said to be the 22-year-old son of Kim Yong-hee who is reported to have been injured in the car accident. She was a dancer in the Mansudae Art Troupe and the daughter of parents who left Japan in the 1960s lured by the promise of enjoying Kim's socialist paradise.
According to former bodyguard Kim Myong-chul, she caught his eye as one of the 2,000 girls employed in Kim Jong Il's so-called pleasure groups.
Each Pleasure Group is composed of three teams - a "satisfaction team", which performs sexual services; a "happiness team," which provides massage and a "dancing and singing team".
A classified document issued by The Workers' Party entitled, "the Project to Guarantee longevity of the Great Leader and the Dear Leader is the Sacred Duty of all Party Members and Party Committees" describes how the girls are recruited and trained.
Selection criteria are issued to every party branch, and at the beginning of the school term a local official visits every senior girls' high schools in his area to select prospective candidates.
The top 100 are forwarded to Section Five of the Organization Department where one out of 10 are chosen and given a medical examination. The list of the final 50 are sent to Kim Jong Il's Body Guard Bureau which is staffed by orphans selected for their loyalty Kim then examines the dossier and makes a final selection.
The new recruits then undergo a six-month training course before they are assigned to one of the 32 villas and palaces around the country which reportedly cost of $2.5 billion.
Kim Jong Choi also studied in Switzerland, living under the assumed identity of the son of the driver and cleaning woman at the North Korean embassy.
He now works in the Party's Department of Agitation and Propaganda and Korea watchers guessed he had become crown prince when the propaganda department began to glorify his mother as "a respected mother" and "a loyal subject".
However Kim Jong Il's younger sister, Kim Kyung Hee, who is often referred to as the "First Lady", may have the final say.
She is married to Chang Song Taek, a top member of the National Defence Commission, the country's most powerful governing body. Three of his brothers are also on it and between them they control the army, the capital garrison and the secret police.
As First Lady, Kim Kyung Hee runs the family's businesses which include gold, zinc and anthracite mining operations and the smuggling of opium, heroin and amphetamines. The CIA estimates that the family is worth four billion dollars.
This wealth enables Kim Jong Il, now 61, to lead the life of a leisured aristocrat. He reportedly has a stable of thoroughbred horses, speed boats, racing cars, and a cellar of vintage French wines and Hennessy cognac, plus a library with 16,000 films and a multinational team of personal chefs.