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David D. Lee

When North Korean leader Kim Jong-un rose from his chair after a two-hour meeting with Vladimir Putin in Beijing last week, aides swooped in almost instantly, polishing the table and scrubbing the seat he had just occupied.
The bizarre spectacle was not just political theatre or a quirk of the supreme leader’s personality, analysts say; it was an act of counter-intelligence.
Kim travelled to Beijing for China’s Victory Day parade, the first occasion the North Korean leader has been seen in public alongside Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping. But while the cameras captured a trilateral show of strength, they also recorded a smaller drama: Kim’s staff carefully wiping down a chair and coffee table he had just used.
Their choreography appeared to confirm long-circulating accounts of Pyongyang’s extraordinary biometric security measures.

Days earlier, Japan’s Nikkei newspaper reported that Kim had brought his own toilet aboard his armoured train to prevent his bodily waste from falling into foreign hands – a precaution he has previously deployed at summits with US and South Korean leaders.
Experts say these efforts reveal how deeply Pyongyang fears the weaponisation of biometric and genetic material.
“The health and the biometric information of the supreme leader is a closely guarded secret and associated with his security,” said Peter Ward a research fellow at the Sejong Institute whose work focuses on North Korean politics, economy and society.
“What they were cleaning up was probably skin cells in his sweat plus other potential biomarkers in his sweat which could identify problems with his health. And with DNA, one can also learn a great deal about his sort of psychological and physical profile and even make guesses about the kinds of things that may be hazardous to him.”
It can seem best for world leaders to conceal their genetic information
Lim Si-keun, professor of forensic science
Such worries are not unfounded. Intelligence agencies around the world have devoted increasing attention to the collection of genetic material, seeing it as a way of assessing leaders’ resilience, vulnerabilities and even negotiating temperaments.
“Personal characteristics like drinking a lot of alcohol or having diabetes can be known from collecting DNA,” Lim Si-keun, a professor of forensic science at Sungkyunkwan University, told This Week in Asia.
“And while human cloning is something we only see in the movies now, we never know how technology will advance in the future. So it can seem best for world leaders to conceal their genetic information.”
Putin also reportedly travels with a personal toilet and has aides collect waste to prevent analysis. During the pandemic, his notorious four-metre table with Emmanuel Macron was rumoured to stem from France’s refusal to hand over genetic samples via a Covid test.

And in the United States, the National Counterintelligence and Security Centre issued a warning in 2021 about securing health and genetic data from potential exploitation by China.
“Such personal information constitutes high-level intelligence that could be strategically utilised in political negotiations or assessments of power stability,” Kim Hyun-jung, a research fellow at South Korea’s Institute for National Security Strategy, told This Week in Asia.
“The possibility of personalised bioweapons has also been a subject of ongoing discussion, but significant scientific and technological constraints at the moment make this extremely unlikely today.”
Intelligence services have long sought to harvest medical details – dating back to Cold War psychiatric profiles of foreign leaders – but the urgency intensified after September 11, when American agencies dramatically expanded DNA databases.
Advances in genetic genealogy allowed US forces to confirm Osama bin Laden’s identity in 2011 using samples from a half-sister. Other countries, including China and the UK, have poured resources into similar methods.
For Kim, whose health has been the subject of speculation for years, the paranoia may be personal as well as strategic.


His unexplained disappearance from public view in 2020 fuelled rumours of emergency surgery, while a change to party by-laws the following year created a “first secretary” role as a contingency plan, suggesting preparations for a leadership vacuum.
The presence of his daughter Kim Ju-ae, believed to be about 13, on the trip to Beijing was another signal. Ward suggested it pointed to early succession planning. “There’s probably multiple reasons why he would appoint a successor much earlier than his grandfather or father, who only acted on it after having a stroke. But when she’s only 13, it just seems a bit suspicious.”
The tensions between secrecy and exposure run to the heart of Pyongyang’s foreign policy.
“They have a joke with the Americans that they’ve been enemies for 100 years,” Ward said. “But with China, they’ve been enemies for 1,000 years. Even if China is relatively close today, they are nonetheless still distrusted.”
The meticulous efforts taken to erase any trace of Kim’s presence in Beijing illustrated both this and a different kind of armament from the tanks and jets on show.
In the emerging contest for biometric intelligence, even a drop of sweat left on a chair can feel like a weapon.


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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his daughter Ju-ae (second from left) arrive back in Pyongyang on Friday after returning from China. Photo: KCNA/KNS /AFP

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his daughter Ju-ae (second from left) arrive back in Pyongyang on Friday after returning from China. Photo: KCNA/KNS/AFP

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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, his daughter Kim Ju-ae (third from left), and his wife Ri Sol-ju (left) visiting the Wonsan Kalma coastal tourist area in Kangwon province in June. Photo:  AFP/KCNA/KNS

North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un (right) and his daughter Ju-ae (centre) during a performance to celebrate the New Year at May Day Stadium in Pyongyang. Photo: KCNA via KNS / AFP

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From his own toilet to a scrubbed-down chair and coffee table, the North Korean leader’s anti-spy tactics reflect a new kind of arms race


From his own toilet to a scrubbed-down chair and coffee table, the North Korean leader’s anti-spy tactics reflect a new kind of arms race.


Why Kim Jong-un travels with his own toilet to battle biometric espionage

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}From his own toilet to a scrubbed-down chair and coffee table, the North Korean leader’s anti-spy tactics reflect a new kind of arms race

From his own toilet to a scrubbed-down chair and coffee table, the North Korean leader’s anti-spy tactics reflect a new kind of arms race