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North Korea sends delegates on 'cheese diplomacy' mission to France North Korea asks French how to make dictator Kim Jong-un’s favourite (Swiss) cheese
(about 1 hour later)
North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un is sending three food experts to France on a ‘cheese diplomacy’ mission. There may be little need for the West to fear the belligerent instincts of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un. According to reports in France, he is a fan of cheese and therefore, conceivably, a “cheese-eating surrender monkey”.
Their mission, should they choose to accept it, is to learn the fine art of cheese making from French cheese masters. Kim Jong-un spent some time in school in Switzerland as a boy and is said to remain partial to Emmental, the classic Swiss cheese with holes. He is, however, unhappy with the quality of the cheese produced in North Korea.
And they have been asked to focus on perfecting the production of Emmental cheese, which is said to be Kim Jong-Un’s favourite snack. Pyongyang has therefore been searching for a French dairy school which could train North Koreans in the art of cheese-making – and specifically making Emmental.
The delegates will spend several months fine-tuning their craft at France’s National Dairy Industry College (ENIL), in the city of Beasancon, according to French website La Lettre A.fr., who have published details of the mission. According to a French news website, La Lettre, three North Korean “experts” are to be trained at the Ecole Nationale d’Industrie Latière (national dairy school) at Mamirolle, near Besançonon the Swiss-French border.
They will then return to the Pyongyang cheese dairy, which has so far been unable to replicate the “requisite quality” of that produced in Europe. The site’s information is, like Emmental, excellent but full of holes. The director of the dairy school, Véronique? Drouet, told The Independent: “It is true that we were contacted by the North Korean ambassador in Paris. He wanted us to train North Koreans but, unfortunately we were not able to  help him.
As the BBC highlights, the poor quality of cheese in North Korea must be a particular source of contention for the communist state, whose neighbour South Korea is a big cheese importer. “We are a small, though very good, school with limited places. We were unable to take the North Koreans.”
According to Quartz: “South Korea’s cheese binge is driving American milk prices to an all-time high”. Pyongyang is presumably looking elsewhere. The North Korean embassy in Paris failed to respond to requests for information.
Japanese newspaper the Asahi Shimbun reports that under Kim Jong-Un’s rule, spending on foreign imports has soared in recent years. North Koreans might be forgiven for thinking that Mr Kim should have bigger priorities than the pursuit of  a higher quality of cheese.
Spending in 2011, during Kim Jong Il’s rule, reached $584.82 million in 2011 – compared with $645.86 in 2012. In June 2012, the United Nations said two-thirds of the country’s 24 million people were facing chronic food shortages. In the same year, Mr Kim was said to have spent $645.8m on “luxury goods,” including cosmetics, handbags, leather products, watches, electronics, cars and top-shelf alcohol.
And it's not the first time that a Supreme Leader has sent delegates to sample Western finery. In 2002, the late Kim Jong-Il purchased the Usher brewery in Trowbridge, Wiltshire to quench North Korean's growing taste for beer. This is not the first time that North Korea has gone to great lengths to satisfy the tastes of its leaders, despite constant reports of famine in one of the most closed and authoritarian states in the world. The previous leader, Kim Jong-il – Mr Kim’s father – was partial to beer.
In 2000, as The Independent revealed last week, North Korea bought up all the equipment of the redundant Ushers brewery in Trowbridge in Wiltshire and shipped it to Pyongyang. That project also involved an exploratory expedition of North Korean officials to meet experts in the field of brewing.
“About 12 of them came at first,” Gary Todd, the brewery’s former owner, said. “Two engineers, two brewers, and the rest were government officials, who were present during every conversation. It was extremely strange.”
A puzzle remains, however. Why do the North Koreans want the French to help them to make Swiss cheese?
France famously has over 500 different kinds of cheese. This was one of the reasons why the French were labelled “cheese-eating surrender monkeys” on The Simpsons and then by an American right-wing journalist, Jonah Goldberg, when former President Jacques Chirac opposed the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq in 2003.
France has several cheeses which resemble Emmental, including Comté which is made in Franche-Comté, the home of the national dairy school. It has no cheese  with holes.