North Korean dictators Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il had placed special agents across Europe for shopping sprees which included buying, luxury carpets, gold-plated guns, small Cessna planes and high-priced foreign cars such as Mercedes-Benz and Lincolns, according to the memoir of former Army Col. Kim Jong-ryul.

Kim, who is hiding in Europe for 16 years, sometimes spent months at a time looking for all the goods, big and small, on the shopping list, the tell-all book, 'In the Dictator's Service' written by two Austrian journalists reveals.

Kim revealed how Kim Il-sung known as The Great Leader ignored the suffering of his people, and placed special agents in Europe just to buy the fancy items he wanted, the Christian Science Monitor reports.

An engineer, Kim Jong-ryul said he was asked to design a special filtration system for the shelter in which Kim Il-sung and his family could hide in order to survive a nuclear attack.

According to him, Kim Il-sung "only ate foreign food" and had his chefs study in Vienna.

He also had a passion for high-priced foreign cars, ranging from Mercedes-Benz and Citroens to Cadillacs and Lincolns, made in the lairs of his worst enemy, the United States.

Colonel Kim fears that exposis about the personal lives of North Korea's leaders has put his life at risk.

"Maybe I'll be shot, killed in the next few days," Kim, who lives at a secret address, told reporters in Vienna after the book came out.

At least, "now I can die with a clear conscience," he said. But "without [publishing] this book, I didn't want to die."

Kim Il-sung died just as North Korea was entering a famine in which 2 million people are estimated to have died. (ANI)