International

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo visited North Korea on the 7th of October, 2018 to try and jump-start denuclearization talks with North Korean officials. After being snubbed by Kim on his last visit, Pompeo met with the increasingly visible North Korean leader this time around and Kim's arrival at the engagement was quite grand indeed. Video from the meeting shows Pompeo waiting in a foyer when two big ornate doors swing open to the outside and Kim saunters over a red carpet and across the foyer to embrace Pompeo. But it's not what happened in the foreground of this video that's most interesting, it's what was sitting in the background—a big, gleaming Rolls Royce Phantom.

Kim's Pullman Guard Mercedes limousines, based on the 2012 S600, have been fixtures in the 'Dear Leader's' travels around Pyongyang, Panmunjom and most recently, abroad. Kim is known transportation aficionado, having a special interest in aircraft and cars since he was a young boy. This made international headlines when Kim took a peek at Trump's limousine, popularly known as The Beast, during the summit in Singapore last June. Now it appears that despite extreme sanctions—especially on luxury goods—and a rickety economy that is supposedly slowly starving due to lack of energy stocks, Kim was able to get his hands on the most luxurious of luxury cars.