SEOUL (Reuters) - In 1993, French neurosurgeon Francois-Xavier Roux received a phone call in Paris from an unidentified North Korean official. The then leader-in-waiting, Kim Jong Il, had suffered a head injury from a horse-riding accident and they wanted his advice.
Fifteen years later the North Koreans contacted him again. This time, it was more urgent. They flew Roux out to Pyongyang in an operation so secret Roux himself was unaware who his patient would be until he met a frail Kim Jong Il lying in a modern intensive care bed flanked by his doctors.