Chef’s Redemption Tells of a Softening North Korea

The New York Times

By MARTIN FACKLE,  August 24, 2012

Kosuke Okahara for The New York Times. Kenji Fujimoto, who was a chef for Kim Jong-il, with photos of his recent visit to Pyongyang.

TOKYO — For years, the Japanese sushi chef who spent over a decade working for the Kim family in North Korea lived in dread of a knock on the door by an agent sent to kill him for returning to Japan and writing a tell-all book exposing the rulers’ extravagant lifestyle.

That visit came in June, but instead of a gun, the agent who surprised him in a convenience store whipped out an invitation bound in red cloth from Kim Jong-un, the leader he last knew as a pudgy, precocious teenager he had called the Prince.

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