The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.
© Thomson Reuters 2024.N Korean leader Kim Jong Un receives car as gift from Putin
By Jack Kim SEOUL©2025 GPlusMedia Inc.
The requested article has expired, and is no longer available. Any related articles, and user comments are shown below.
© Thomson Reuters 2024.
40 Comments
Login to comment
UChosePoorly
I hope he reports it to the DPRK Ethics Commission as any decent public servant would do. They may or may not allow him to keep it. :)
lincolnman
All we need now is Trump to give Kin and Vlad a pair of his gold $399 tennis shoes and the three little dictators can complete their mutual admiration society...
Samit Basu
@kaimycahl
Of course North Koreans inspect the vehicle thoroughly before putting it into service.
kaimycahl
LMFAO Putin friends and closet friends don't last long. I wonder if the car was designed with a range destruct system that can be detonated from anywhere and blow the car up at any time. Putin can not be trusted the guy was once and still head of what was the KGB. The guys has no blood in his veins just sand!! He is evil!!
Samit Basu
@Redemption
These presidential limos are one-off vehicles, resigned to survive RPG, land mines, and gas attacks.
Of course Russia has the engineering to build these kinds of special vehicles.
Peter Engström
Great, now the Great Leader can drive around in a "new" car and can discard his old Volvo from the batch of cars they ordered from Sweden in the 70s but never payed for!
Redemption
Man just watch for the poison pins in the seat. I am pretty darn sure that Mr. Kim will have the car completely and thoroughly examined before he ever sits his in it.
USNinJapan2
JJE
Hardly. Looks like they have a few variations of just one model/design, and a knock-off Rolls-Royce/Bentley at that. And they sold a whopping 115 cars last year. Wow. Congratulations...
theFu
I thought they'd lost it when the Yugo defected.
Hopefully, someone is targeting those foreign vehicles of Lil' Kim for destruction. Would be sad if they all caught fire. Unique vehicles make great targets for cruise missiles, so I hear.
Mr Kipling
The car is pretty cool, looks wize a bit of a Rolls Royce knock off. They are opening dealerships in the Middle East. The armored version should sell well even though the price tag is eye watering.
owzer
Might as well make it a gift. North Korea has a history of stealing cars.
https://www.ndtv.com/offbeat/north-korea-ordered-1-000-volvo-cars-from-sweden-and-never-paid-read-the-viral-story-4561242
桜川雪
Found some images of the car (Aurus Senat):
https://img.thedailybeast.com/image/upload/c_crop,d_placeholder_euli9k,h_4120,w_7324,x_0,y_518/dpr_2.0/c_limit,w_585/fl_lossy,q_auto/2023-09-13T063022Z_830275417_RC2I73A1N4OX_RTRMADP_3_RUSSIA-NORTHKOREA-PUTIN-KIM_g6hrae
https://english.cdn.zeenews.com/sites/default/files/2022/05/16/1043098-aurus-senat-presidential-limousine.jpg
桜川雪
Was the car on the table (matchbox car)? Can we see the car? I'm sure KNA or RT has images that could be used.
Martimurano
This despot Dictator has zero conscience and wouldn't waste a second of his life wondering what his people thought of him swanning around in fancy cars.
The population really should be informed of all his obscene excesses, and the freedom-loving democracies of the world have a vital role to play here - the release of millions of letter-drops from mysterious weather-balloons informing the ordinary North Korean people would be the easiest and most peaceful way to foment the revolution which is long overdue in this extremely repressed and deprived country. Just need enough smart people to get this organised.
Dr.Cajetan Coelho
Gift-giving, gift-receiving, and gift-reciprocating are time-tested practices among fellow mortals worldwide. Marcel Mauss, Marilyn Strathern, Bronislaw Malinowski, Graeber, Godlier, Pritchard, Gregory, and such other tall anthropologists in the Global North have left behind a rich corpus of literature on the meaning and significance of gift giving.
John
Made of cardboard with an extra engine in the trunk like the old Ladas?
shogun36
Fun!
I didn't know they still made Yugos.
Or was it a Tetris car? Do blocks fall down as you drive?
I hope it was pink, that would be super cute.
Hopefully for White Day, Kimi will give Puti a couple of pocket rockets as stocking stuffers.
plasticmonkey
Nice read! Very informative and well-grounded in fertile journalistic soil.
You've convinced me to immigrate to North Korea. Join you there, comrade!
HopeSpringsEternal
Agreed, make effort to be at least funny and not simply cruel. Pres. Kim's surely trying to help NK, hopes to join BRICS one day and obviously has more and more friends in powerful places, so he deserves some credit.
NK has 1000's of times more capacity to destroy Japan than just few years ago. Pres. Kim can thus more easily and rightly focus on helping NK better progress from inside with more prosperity and positive global engagement.
didou
Kim does not drive anyway. He has his own driver.
HopeSpringsEternal
It seems NK weapons production greatly benefiting from US NATO Ukraine Proxy War and Russia's resulting strategic weapons tech. proliferation to NK. Quite certain new NK drone production will begin soon, how pleasant!
HopeSpringsEternal
Can be rest assured this car has sufficient suspension to support heavy armor, bulletproof glass AND Pres. Kim!
OssanAmerica
I'm sure Kim will put that Lada to good use. Maybe after his Mercedes stops running.
TaiwanIsNotChina
Someone uses deadly weapons for stealing territory.
nik
Yes, let him ride, what a pity for you? at least it's not a weapon for killing people. Someone gives cars, and someone gives other countries deadly weapons
Yuuju
Sad people
whats the point to have a luxury car but to have an empty soul, and you die the same way as everyone eventually.
Onlooker
Kim must be cursing Vladimir for his stinginess.
JJE
Didn't know Russia has a car industry? The Russian car industry is reborn and in renaissance, thanks to sanctions, as is much of the economy in general. Since western automakers, who dominated the marker left, the factories and infrastructure has been turned over to domestic and friendly international partners and it is roaring back. China has essentially supplanted Japan in the Russia-Belarus market (one factor helping China overtake Japan on global automotive exports recently).
Aurus is a fantastic line of luxury cars and has many exciting models in the pipeline.
ian
Just slap them with more sanctions
Fighto!
Two murderous despots. Despicable.
The UN ban is at this stage pointless. Considering NK is supplying Fascist Russia with arms to bomb sovereign Ukraine, any UN agreement is not even worth talking about. Fascist Russia would be supplying NK with a lot more than just cars for Fatboy.
deanzaZZR
Maybe when Trump gets reelected he can send a return love letter to Kim along with a high end Tesla made in China.
ClippetyClop
.....Cooler under the armest for a magnum of cabbage water
wallace
Antique Lada, maybe. Fitted with submachine guns. Missile launcher.
Moonraker
King Kim's conscience must surely squirm as his people starve and live hard-scrabble existences in a vast prison state. No? Wonder if his people know of his enthusiasms.
ClippetyClop
Not one that anyone but government officials and oligarchs trying to impress Vlad would be interested in.
And even then they'll have a Bentley or a Merc for their daily runanround.
I wouldn't mind an 80's Zil though.
sakurasuki
Need to bug sweep that "gift" first, never know what additional bonus that might included. Unless he really trust the person who gave that gift.
PTownsend
Moscow under Putin has shown its disdain for the global community, and will only play by what Eastern European co-workers claimed were "Moscow Rules', i.e anything you can get away with without anyone strong enough to stop you. One western 'leader' even praised Putin for being able to take over country for a few dollars worth of sanctions.
Given it was Putin's idol Stalin that created the Kim regime and the Korean cult of personality it's not surprising to see Putin there backing Kim, Putin grabbing a photo-op with Kim might appeal to the pro-totalitarian sects, but not most reasonable people who prefer democracies to heavy handed authoritarianism.
Redemption
Interesting. Didn’t know Russia had a car industry.