They may have been dead for years, but a Japanese human rights activist believes the embalmed bodies of former North Korean dictators Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il can be used as leverage to force the present regime to feed its own people instead of spending money on nuclear weapons and missiles.

Ken Kato, a director of Human Rights in Asia and a member of the International Coalition to Stop Crimes Against Humanity in North Korea, has written to members of the United Nations Security Council to request that they halt the transfer of chemicals needed to preserve the embalmed corpses, which are on display in glass coffins in the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun in Pyongyang.

Recent media reports have stated that the embalming work and regular maintenance of the corpses is carried out by technicians from the Centre for Scientific Research and Teaching Methods in Biochemical Technologies - the so-called “Lenin Lab” - in Moscow, which first embalmed and displayed Vladimir Lenin’s body in 1924.

Experts from the institute have travelled to the North Korean capital approximately every 18 months since Kim Il-sung, revered as the founder of the nation, died in 1994 to ensure that his remains do not decompose. The same work has been carried out on the corpse of his son, Kim Jong-il, since his death in 2011.