Putin And Kim Jong-un's Guards Did Not Share An Air Conditioner

• 4.09.2025, 15:41

A three-degree difference almost caused a special services brawl.

On September 3, Vladimir Putin met with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un in Beijing, Kommersant reports that it happened "unexpectedly," and during the quick preparations for the arrival their security chiefs nearly fought over the temperature in the room.

Kommersant correspondent Andrey Kolesnikov describes how he witnessed a dispute between members of the security services.

"A Korean colleague silently and suddenly seized the remote control of the air conditioner on the wall and began to adjust the temperature as he saw fit. And this is a matter of extreme principle. He managed to raise it to +23°C before his Russian colleague intervened. He insisted, as I heard him say, on +20°C. He was speaking in Russian, of course. Strangely enough, his Korean colleague understood him and didn't give up at all.

They pulled each other's fingers off the remote control for a while before one of them lost his cool a little and in one move settled the matter in his favor. It must have hurt the Korean a bit," Putin's biographer described the Russians' victory.