In 2015, just over three years after he became the third supreme leader of North Korea, Kim Jong Un resurrected a sordid family tradition, still shrouded in mystery today.

The infamous dictator, now 42-years-old, ordered the creation of a brand-new ‘Pleasure Squad’, continuing the legacy of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, the hermit kingdom’s founder and Eternal President.

It’s only through snapshots of testimony from courageous defectors who have fled the regime and spoken out about the dark reality of North Korean society that the truth of the underground troupe has been unearthed.

The girls, whose role is to please their leader, are plucked from classrooms and must endure invasive medical tests determining their virginity before they are deemed worthy of a life of sexual servitude.

As tradition goes in the Kim family, the virginity of selected partners is of particular importance, because the act of sex allows the supreme leader the chance to absorb the girls’ so-called ‘ki’ or life-force.

In the late 1970s, at the peak of Il Sung’s ascendancy, he ordered his officials to scour the nation for its most attractive young women and girls to act as his own personal singers and dancers – a tradition that his son, Kim Jong Il, mirrored during his rule until his death in December 2011.

Read more: Secrets of Kim Jong Un’s sexual ‘Pleasure Squad’: Women and girls hand-picked to ‘satisfy’ North Korean leaders so a young virgin’s life force can be absorbed during sex