But propaganda photos released from North Korea show youthful despot, Kim Jong-un, has another goal – to steal King Edward’s crown as the last word in potatoes.
Kim, 33, beamed as he posed by a vast mountain of spuds at a brand new potato factory, in the city of Samjiyon, near the Chinese border, this week.
The government boasts the processing plant was built in just a month and can produce 4,000 tons of potato starch every year to keep its population of 25 million fed on a filling, if somewhat dull diet.
The carefully staged photos, shared with the world by North Korea’s state news agency, give the impression the communist state is thriving, with sparkling new factories produce an abundance of food.
But the reality is far different, as everyday North Koreans are ravaged by food shortages and are rationed just 300g of food a day – the equivalent of two family packs of crisps.
Two in five North Koreans now have insufficient food, according to the UN, which in 2014 concluded that Kim’s regime had systematically violated human rights and committed crimes against humanity.
Its gulag of concentration camps is thought to contain over 100,000 citizens.