You’ve got to hand it to young Kim Jong-un, brazenly flaunting his new luxury yacht in North Korea. He’s got style for the tubby leader of a totalitarian state. It runs in the family - his dad Kim Jong-il loved his yacht so much he was buried with it. Now Kim Jong-un has been showing off his flash £4.5 million boat which has somehow evaded international sanctions. And it doesn’t sit idle - he gets in it. According to NK News, he recently used a 95-foot Princess to tour the country's east coast for a 10-day official trip.
If the craft – which looks like a Princess 95MY - was acquired by Kim recently, he could have busted UN sanctions banning the sale or export of "luxury goods" to the North Korean government.
The UN vetoed sales of luxury goods to North Korea in 2006 in yet another fruitless attempt to halt their nuclear programme. But the woolly terms of the ban left open the interpretation of "luxury goods". A few months ago luxury cars and yachts were specifically included.
French luxury brand group LVMH owns British-based Princess Yachts, makers of the 95MY.
State media spotted the yacht during a top over at a fishery in May, then state news agency KCNA showed Kim and his generals walking along the docks during an inspection, with the yacht visible behind them. NK News thinks it was deliberately in shot, and who knows what message the propaganda machine was trying to spread.
The latest version of the yacht, the Princess 98MY, starts at £5.6 million. As for the yacht maker, they said they were now investigation how one of its gleaming machines got into Kim’s hands.