The AP reports S. Korea Faces N. Korea Payoffs Scandal:
SEOUL, South Korea - South Korea's government was embroiled Saturday in a scandal over alleged payoffs to North Korea, adding a new twist to the international nuclear standoff with the communist country.I bet $341 million buys a lot of cognac.
South Korean President Kim Dae-jung is accused by opposition leaders of secretly funneling $341 million to North Korea before his historic 2000 summit with that nation's leader, Kim Jong Il.
If true, the payment could be seen as helping seal the meeting, which helped earn the South Korean president a Nobel Peace Prize that year for his overtures to the North.
The allegations were first raised last fall, then died down. They flared again Friday, when President-elect Roh Moo-hyun said prosecutors should investigate the matter. Roh, from Kim's ruling Millennium Democratic Party, takes office next month.
Choi later wrote. "Kim Jong Il was constantly offering me drinks, disregarding my weakness in drinks."
That's a weakness the Dear Leader never exhibited. He has an amazing capacity for alcohol and an especial weakness for cognac. For many years he favored Hennessy's VSOP, or Very Special Old Pale, but in 1992 switched to Hennessy's Paradis, a 50-year-old brandy -- the oldest commercially available -- at $630-a-pop. In 1994, Hennessy confirmed that Kim was its biggest single buyer of cognac two years running. Analysts estimate his account ran in the neighborhood of $750,000 a year.
