Minichan

SEOUL--North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has handed out precision-made Swiss watches to favored high-ranking party officials, proof that Pyongyang is skirting international sanctions on exports of luxury products to the reclusive country.

Sources close to North Korea said Kim presented the watches at a convention of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea in Pyongyang in May.

In doing so, Pyongyang showed it is getting around strict sanctions imposed by the United Nations, Japan, the United States and South Korea to protest North Korea's missile tests and nuclear arms development.

The sources said that Kim, who is chairman of the Workers’ Party, presented the watches to 100 or so of the 3,600 participants in the convention. They included the party’s central committee members and military commanders.

The central upper portion of the watch faces bears the design of the party’s emblem consisting of “brush, hammer and sickle,” the symbols for intellectuals, laborers and peasants.

The lower portion portrays the Big Dipper, a group of seven bright stars, which represents the seventh party convention.

The maker of the watches is unknown. When North Korea placed the order for the timepieces, it instructed the maker not to add “Swiss-made” to the design, the sources said.

This was so North Korea could emphasize the watches were “given as a result of Kim's largesse,” one of the sources said.

According to South Korean government sources, Kim himself favors the Swiss brand Movado high-precision watch.