Seoul police have busted two North Korean defectors for selling high-priced, illegally manufactured sexual stimulants they falsely claimed kept North Korean leader Kim Jong-il’s Taepodong fully fueled.
According to police, the husband-wife team began illegally producing three kinds of health supplements last year. They produced the goodies by mixing herbal medicines with tadalafil, the active ingredient in the erectile dysfunction drug Cialis. The tadalafil was smuggled in from China.
They sold the food supplements for 300,000 won a box, making a suspected 525 million won in ill-begotten profits.
To encourage sales, the husband, who in November 2002 published the book “I was Kim Jong-il’s Bodyguard,” even produced an advertisement that claimed the supplements were a wonder drug taken by Kim Jong-il himself. According to the ad, the supplements kept Kim virile and worked wonders on disorders like erectile dysfunction and premature ejaculation.
The couple used a distributor to sell their wares to massage parlor employees, and an herbal medicine doctor to sell them to the general public.
Some customers complained of side-effects, including body swelling and quickened pulse.
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Good to see defectors embracing capitalism I say!
“body swelling”
Well, at least they produced ‘herbal elixers’ that actually work. Now, if only the police would crack down on the rest of the herbal medicine-touting woo-woos… I guess it’s only illegal if your herbal remedy contains something that’s effective against the medical problem it claims to treat.
This gives me hope that despite many decades of separation, the Koreans remain one people……
They worked different markets, but any chance they were in cahoots with the gentleman allegedly selling the “Swiss” watches?
For the interest of learners of Korean language, the article gives formal vocabulary two bodily (dys)functions that the potion was supposed to aid, translated by Robert above. “Erectile dysfunction” is 발기부전 and premature ejaculation 조루(早漏). Even though 발기(發起) may not be that colloquial as an expression, the connotations with this (dys)function are clear enough to have raised the question that perhaps a word other than 발기인 (勃起人)would be better for people who are founding a new political party. (Cannot remember when that was, because there have been so many of those occasions.) Well, weren’t they in a way “erecting” (세우다) a party?
Sewing,
You’ve found the connection. The country where some of the DORK – sorry typo – DPRK ruling family kids have gone to school is Switzerland!
Allowing Kim Jong-il to breed any more than he has already should be a crime against humanity. That is one family line which must be terminated.
If the DL really does take the stuff,maybe the world will get lucky and he’ll pop an aneurism (sp?).
Anything even remotely suggestive of Kim Jong Il having sex makes me want to puke.
So, was he really a bodyguard htough?
I seem to recall hearing about that book.
why were they selling it to massage parlor employees?
so that they could resell to clients, for yet more markup…
Bopshop — good line!
Yes, his line was funny.
And Antti, thank you for the vocabulary lesson!
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