Memo shows Kim Jong Il suggested Bill Clinton should vacation in North Korea

(Image credit: JP Yim/Getty Images)

last updated 28 October 2016

A memo attached to a hacked email shows that in 2009, former President Bill Clinton was invited to go sightseeing in North Korea by then-ruler Kim Jong Il, and seemed open to the offer.

Clinton was in North Korea to help with negotiations to free two American journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee, who had been arrested and jailed; he was successful, and the women were released. The memo was apparently written by David Straub, a Stanford University professor whose name was at the bottom of it, BuzzFeed reports, and it was attached to an email forwarded to John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman and Bill Clinton's former White House chief of staff. It's believed Podesta's email was hacked by Russians.

Kim, the father of current North Korean ruler Kim Jong Un, died in 2011. During his meeting with Clinton, he suggested the former president "tour someday when there were no problems in bilateral relations." The memo states that Clinton shared he would like to visit a "beautiful seaside location" depicted in a painting at his guesthouse, and "Kim said he would show him a much more beautiful place, and that President Clinton should come back to the DPRK on holiday." The pair also spoke about Clinton being forced to cancel a trip he planned to take to North Korea at the end of his second term because of last-minute peace talks between Israel and Palestine, and Kim noted Clinton was the first foreign leader to send his condolences when his father, North Korea's founder Kim Il Sung, died. Read more about the memo and Kim's thoughts on George W. Bush and President Obama at BuzzFeed.

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Catherine Garcia has worked as a senior writer at The Week since 2014. Her writing and reporting have appeared in Entertainment Weekly, The New York Times, Wirecutter, NBC News and "The Book of Jezebel," among others. She's a graduate of the University of Redlands and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.