North Korea’s Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il and his cronies have McDonald’s hamburgers flown in daily even as the country’s people endure repeated food shortages, news reports say.

The totalitarian country’s appetite for luxury clothing, cigarettes, watches and cognac from China has doubled in a year, a sign of a non-stop shopping spree by the country’s elites, the Korea Herald reports.

International sanctions after two nuclear tests in 2006 and 2009 banned North Korea from trading in luxury goods and weapons.

Meanwhile, it has again asked the world to help it feed its 24 million people, blaming lower crop yields as it has since the mid-1990s.

While the European Union plans to send $14.5 million in food aid, the U.S. and South Korea have been reluctant to join the drive, the Los Angeles Times reports.

Now, officials in the South Korean Ministry of Unification have told the Herald that some of Pyongyang’s power elites have McDonald’s hamburgers delivered to their homes from China through North Korea’s Air Koryo.

North Korean trade firms are increasing imports of luxury brand items from Gucci, Armani and Rolex, the unification ministry was quoted as saying.

The North spent about $7.5 million (U.S.) to buy cigarettes, including Marlboro and Mild Seven, up 117 per cent from last year. The country also imported $2.4 million worth of Hennessy Cognac, whiskey and Japanese beer, up 94 per cent, it said.

Some $550,000 worth of class A beef was also brought in, apparently for parties among the elite, the unification ministry said.

Meanwhile, imports of basic food such as corn and rice stood at only 4 per cent of total imports, or $46 million.

According to Beijing customs, quoted by Seoul officials, the total volume of trade between Pyongyang and its last-remaining ally and economic benefactor surged by almost two times in the first five months this year, compared with the same period of the previous year.

Some scholars believe North Korea has exaggerated its need for food, alleging that the aid is turned over to the military or stored for future use, such as a planned celebration next year to mark the anniversary of the regime, the Times said.

A recent photo released by the state-run Korean Central News Agency, for example, is believed to have been manipulated to show people wading in floodwaters that did not exist.

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“I do not believe these claims about mass starvation,” Andrei Lankov, a professor at Kookmin University in Seoul and the author of several books on North Korean history and politics, told the Times.

He called the move by Pyongyang “a deliberate campaign to get free food which will then be distributed to the privileged groups as government gifts. This will allow them to increase their legitimacy and win some popular support at the expense of the Western and South Korean taxpayers.”

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