If Kim Jong-un won't face a war crimes court, then who on earth will?

In the endless guessing game about what really goes in the court of North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, two questions are causing even more intrigue than normal. The first is whether the portly Mr Kim has had to have surgery on his feet, the result of tottering around in Cuban heels designed to boost his height. And the second is whether those same feet are now are now quaking in their boots at the prospect of being referred to the International Criminal Court.

As The Telegraph reported on Wednesday, the human rights committee of United Nations general assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favour of a move to have Mr Kim investigated by the Hague for crimes against humanity. The move follows February's UN report into Pyongyang's appalling human rights record, in which the author, the Australian judge Michael Kirby, likened the regime variously to the Nazis, the Khmer Rouge and Russia under Stalin.

Unlike some more excitable UN functionaries, who are fond of hurling similar insults at Israel and America, Judge Kirby backed up his claims with cold and chillingly sombre research. He spent much of 2013 hosting a roving UN inquiry panel that held evidence-taking sessions from North Korean expats in London, Washington, Seoul and Tokyo - everywhere, in fact, except Pyongyang, where they were refused entry.

The result of this gruesome human rights roadshow was a 372 page report - the length of a medium-sized horror novel - which detailed everything from torture and slavery through to mass murder in prison camps, where bodies are routinely burned and the ash used as fertiliser.

Indeed, when I spoke to Mr Kirby on the eve of Tuesday's UN vote, he told me: "These images reminded me of what awaited General Eisenhower and General Montgomery when they arrived at the camps in occupied Europe in 1945."

Colin Freeman, Chief foreign correspondent.

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