One of my favorite magazines is Atlantic Monthly. In the February edition, North Korea dictator Kim Jong II‘s former cook pens an article ($) about the decade he spent cooking for the, might we say, idiosyncratic Mr. Kim. The entire article is well worth reading, but here is a sampling:

Kim Jong Il is an avid equestrian, and has even appeared in a TV movie atop a snow-white horse. (All horses belonging to the Kim family are white.) I often accompanied him on long rides. . .
One day in 1992, as I was riding behind Kim Jong Il at a right-turning path, I noticed that his horse was standing by itself. Kim had fallen off the horse. It had apparently slipped on a bed of pebbles laid over some asphalt being repaired. Kim Jong Il had hit his head and shoulder quite hard and had fallen unconscious. A doctor was called immediately.
I’m not sure when he regained consciousness, but the next day we all returned to Pyongyang by his private train. From that day, every evening at 10:00 P.M. for the next month, five or six of his administrative staff members and I would be injected with the same painkiller that Kim Jong Il was taking. He was afraid he would become addicted to it, and didn’t want to be the only one.