North Korean leader Kim Jong-un handed out copies of Adolf Hitler's memoir "Mein Kampf" to department chiefs of the Workers Party's Central Committee on his birthday on Jan. 8, an anti-regime website said Tuesday.
The book is among a special selection of the world's 100 best classic books according to the tastes of the Kim family, New Focus quoted an informed source as saying. New Focus is run by Jang Jin-song, a North Korean poet who used to work at the Workers Party's United Front Department before defecting to the South.
Hitler's book lays out a deranged program of anti-Semitism and all-engulfing propaganda that became the basis for the short-lived Third Reich.
"Kim Jong-un stressed to top officials the need to pursue a policy of both nuclear and economic development in tandem," the source said. "He instructed them to study the Third Reich and how Hitler reconstructed Germany after its defeat in World War I, and find ways to apply it to the North."
The Washington Post also quoted New Focus as reporting that Kim is doling out imported sporting goods, music CDs or books to senior officials, whereas his father Kim Jong-il used to buy their loyalty with luxury goods like cognac or Italian suiting.
