He’s staying in one of the world’s finest five star hotels, but Kim Jong Un still brought a toilet with him to Singapore. Kim does so because according to one North Korean military defector, the leader’s “excretions contain information about his health status so they can’t be left behind.”
Sorry, Kim, bringing your toilet to Singapore won’t prevent you from leaving behind biological material. Moreover, it’s a point of intelligence interest in and of itself why exactly the North Koreans are so concerned about Kim’s excrement. What does Kim have to hide?
We don’t know of course, but based on his rotund belly and penchant for high quality foreign cuisine, it seems unlikely that Kim suffers from the intestinal parasites that afflict many of his subjects. Yet stool analysis would also show the presence of ill-health indicators such as excessive blood cells, unusual PH levels and bile or mucus. Even if these data points were out of the ordinary, their publication might weaken Kim’s credibility as a powerful leader.
That said, Kim’s toilet doesn’t give him an absolute ability to avoid biological and chemicals measurement and signature intelligence analysis. If they want to, foreign intelligence services could collect this information from Kim in a number of other ways. With physical proximity to Kim, who just went on a public walkabout through Singapore, intelligence officers could measure his breath or sweat. With physical proximity to Kim, they could analyze his body heat signature and gait as an indicator of any physical ailments. Most valuable of all would be collecting any excretions from anything Kim touched or shed (hair folicles, for example). That genetic material could be collected for analysis.
Still, the most interesting concern here is that the North Koreans even employ a toilet for Kim at all. That action has intelligence value of its own in the sense that it illustrates the regime’s paranoia and the possibly unstable character of its leader.
