Two & a Half Men : The Kim Dynasty

 

The Democratic People's Republic of Korea

 

Note: it's only 25% of those things.

 

“The popular portrayal of this Marxist nation is something like one of the more harrowing episodes of MASH, only with the cast of wacky characters replaced by twitchy, heavily-armed, Stalinist meth addicts.” – Cracked.com

 

Kim Il-sung was born Kim Song-ju 15 April 1912 in a small village outside Pyongyang. He was the eldest child of three brothers, and were raised as good Christian boys, with their dad being an elder in the local Presbyterian church. The family had a little money and were always “a step away from poverty”. By all accounts it was a pretty standard sort of early 1900’s Korean childhood.

Such normality was thrown into upheaval when he was just eight years old after fleeing to Manchuria with his family after the Japanese invasion and occupation of the Korean Peninsula. This lit the fire in young Kim that would burn for the rest of his life: he would henceforth be dedicated body-and-soul to Korean nationalism and defence from external threats.

Settled in their new home of Manchuria Kim quickly became involved in politics and was a member of several communist organisations, beginning at the age of 14 (!). His zeal for workers’ rights led to a brief stint in gaol after authorities discovered the South Manchurian Communist Youth Association – a group of which he was a member – three weeks after its foundation and arrested the lot of them. He was 17. 

But like any good communist temporary imprisonment didn’t stop him. He hated the Japanese passionately for the occupation of his homeland and this fuelled him to join various anti-Japanese guerrilla groups operating in northern China. He excelled in these groups, and quickly began to make a name for himself. 

When the Japanese expanded their occupation into his new home of Manchuria in 1931 it played right into his nationalist mindset and he stepped up his game, becoming more and more involved in resistance activism. In 1935 was appointed political commissar for the 3rd Detachment of the Second Division of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army, consisting of around 160 soldiers. He was 23 years old. This was also the year he adopted the name he would be known by for the rest of his life: ‘Kim Il-sung’, which means “Kim become the sun” because that's just the sort of thing that happens in Asia. 

His fame only grew. Just a year later he was given command of an entire division of a few hundred men. A raid he led on a small Korean town just inside the border was touted as a great success in an otherwise difficult environment to operate in, and, much like everything else in Kim’s life, it would later go on to be blown all out of proportion and attributed almost mythical status. 

The Japanese believed him to be the most effective and popular guerrilla, and referred to him as "The Tiger”. They even sent a special unit to hunt him and his squad down, but the young Kim was not only able to evade but to destroy it. He’s still in his twenties, for God’s sake. 

Eventually Manchuria became too heavily infested with Japanese soldiers that in 1940 he had to flee across the border into the Soviet Union, with whom he shared ideological ties. Kim served in the Soviet Red Army until 1945, where he rose to the rank of Major. 

At the very end of WWII, long after it was obvious that Japan was going to fall, the Soviet Union declared war on Japan and marched troops into the occupied territories, allowing Kim to return home for the first time in 26 years, all starry-eyed at the prospect of communising his newly-independent home country. Stalin wanted a communist-friendly leader/puppet for the newly occupied territories, and a horrifying match was made. 

So the Korean Peninsula as a whole had a bit of a problem. Korea had been occupied by Japan since 1910, and with the Japanese surrender the question arose of who was going to oversee and assist the setting up of a new independent government. Initially it was a joint US/Soviet venture, although tensions soon started to show. 

As you may know from James Bond documentaries, the US and Soviet Union haven’t always been the best friends they were when when bonding over punching Nazis in the face, and it became clear that a joint administration wasn't going to work long-term...or even short-term. The Koreans, who just wanted a functioning Korean government that wasn’t being used as a political football, were also unhappy with the joint venture. 

Displaying the timeless wisdom of King Solomon, the superpowers just figured they’d cut it in half for the time being and try to prove to the other how superior their system of government was. And so, the 38th parallel was chosen as the new border (essentially at random by two low-level guys who didn’t know what they were doing) and in 1945 the two states were born. 

The South was administered initially by the United States Military Government, the north by the USSR and its communist allies. And now, Kim Il-sung. 

Directly following the split, everybody thought it would only be a temporary measure before reunification under one government following free elections. Many Koreans were unhappy with the two government solution, which were both heavily engaged in all sorts of political shenanigans, further stressing the situation. Most of the conflict was based around the communism vs capitalism schools of thought. Think about it as something akin to the modern Ford vs Holden debate: super passionate supporters on both sides, but after 30 years you look back and wonder why the hell you spent all that energy arguing and didn't just buy a Toyota. 

The two zones were each increasingly polarised by their Cold War big brothers, and the “temporary” occupation and governance of each end of the peninsula were rapidly becoming ideologically entrenched and bitter enemies, encouraged and instigated by the superpower puppeteers. 

And so the Koreans got dragged into the Cold War, despite numerous reunification programs and efforts, and the full depth of the blind hatred that is so typical of Cold War interactions crystallised on the small, inoffensive Korean Peninsula. The Korean War occurred soon after, things were said that can’t be taken back, and the two states technically remain at war to this day. 

An interesting irony is that directly after the war, both countries were amongst the poorest in the world with something in the order of a GDP per capita of around $80 (Australia's was about $1800 for comparison). Throughout the 60's, North and South Korea had very similar economies: very limited in size and not showing much promise at all. This is hardly surprising of course - tiny, unimportant, undeveloped countries in an unimportant, undeveloped part of the world.

South Korea was initially similarly restrictive and unstable before somebody pressed the "Turbocharge" button in the 70's and undergoing a rapid transformation into the highly developed, highly nourished economic powerhouse it is today. International megacorps such as Samsung, LG and Hyundai all call Seoul home, contributing to its membership in the G20. Over 90% of Southerners own a mobile phone, have crazy fast internet, and use it to watch nerds play computer games competitively and professionally for multi-million-dollar prizes.

Standards of living are very high, with a very healthy GDP, high life expectancy, highly stable government, and low crime. Life is pretty damn good for its 50 million inhabitants. They enjoy a fine reputation the world over as a highly democratic first-world nation and have a bright future ahead of them on just about every measurable scale. 

The North, however, has blossomed into the nation-state equivalent of that undiagnosed autistic kid at school who always had sticky fingers and occasionally sucker-punched the teacher. Most of the differences between the two countries can be directly attributed to two and a half men: the Kim dynasty. 

Before I continue, here’s a few completely unrelated facts about North Korea to get a feel for the economic development of the Hermit Kingdom.

- About 25 million people in an area half the size of Victoria. 

- 26 / 1000 infant mortality rate (South Korea has 4.08)

- standing army of about 1.2 million soldiers (South Korea has around 400,000. Australia has about 60,000 plus 20,000-odd reservists )

- Military spending is around 22% of budget or 8.2 bil USD (South Korea's expenditure is 2.8% of its budget or 26.1 billion USD. Australia's is about $45 billion, around 2% of GDP)

- <0.1 internet users per 100 people. South Korea is over 80.

- Suffered a major famine in the early 90's that caused between 250,000 to 3.5 million deaths that could have been easily avoided by non-communist economic policies and a willingness to treat "human rights" as something other than "just something you say to keep the UN off your back".

 

**

 

After the Korean War things were developing inside NK more or less in line with the rest of the world – albeit with extensive Chinese and Soviet assistance. The economy grew, urbanisation increased and Kim established political ties with such stalwarts of democracy as Idi Amin of Uganda, Cambodia’s Pol Pot, Colonel Gaddafi of Libya and the nepotistic Ceausescu of Romania. It seemed as though the North Korea was just another example of a communist satellite state no different from countless others around the world, buddying up to whoever they could.  

But in the 70s the shit slowly edged closer to the fan. NK’s economy was increasingly military-focussed – always a sign of healthy and balanced financial management – and Kim borrowed heavily to fund aggressive expansion into all manner of industry infrastructure. He had big plans for his tiny state involving the usual communist production fantasies, despite mostly existing purely on donations from big brothers China and the USSR. But then in 1973 the oil crisis hit, dropping the export prices of many of NK’s primary revenue sources. It began to default on international debts, eventually ceasing even the pretext of repayment. 

Compounding this was the centrally-planned economy – a staple of communist governments – beginning to falter and reach the maximum of what it could achieve. The West was leaping ahead with all the free enterprise, investment, introduction of computers and consumer-driven spending, while NK stagnated. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Eastern bloc in 1991 further punished NK’s economy, leaving the state almost completely politically isolated. Kim was unfazed and claimed that the collapse of just about all other communist states demonstrated the correctness of the North Korean policy of juche. 

Juche is a broad-ranging, pseudo-religious ideology embraced by the Worker's Party of Korea as the embodiment of Kim Il-sung’s wisdom. It holds that a communist state should exercise political independence, economic self-sufficiency, and military self-reliance. Given that NK accepts countless millions in aid donations in external support it seems sort of…hypocritical to espouse. 

Juche stresses hugely the development of a national economy and military to act in defence and hasn't once resulted in anything worthwhile. It is also responsible for the principle of ‘songun’, or ‘military-first policy’, which states that the military should take precedence in any and all areas before the other needs of regular citizens. This works out about as well as it sounds. 

On July 8, 1994, Kim Il-sung died of a sudden heart attack, and also being 82 in a country where science is replaced by belief in the ability of your head of state to control the weather. The younger Kim took over officially, and that’s where I believe NK takes a turn from brutal, repressive Soviet-wannabe state to a surreal pocket of the world where Kim-family delusions are imposed upon a population of living people. 

Kim il-sung was an intelligent, charismatic, driven man who had a great vision for the future of his people: a crusade that began with the Japanese occupation of his home. He fought all his life against such imperialism and crafted both his public image and government policy meticulously to enable the communist philosophy to take root and blossom (relatively) in NK. 

Kim Jong-il was a childish sociopath who grew up surrounded by the insane levels of propaganda surrounding him and his father and never realised that it was all a façade, and that he wasn’t in fact the son of a living god. Despite being a deluded president of an irrelevant country, he kept the international community on its toes for just about the entirety of his 17 year-reign. Whether that was due to him being a cunning political strategist or mentally unbalanced is still debated. 

Kim Jong-il was born in a small Russian town Vyatskoye on 16th February, 1941, where his father was commander of a military unit composed of Chinese and Korean exiles displaced by the Japanese occupation. Being born in the Soviet Union, he was given the name Yuri Irsenovich Kim, which he later changed to name to match his father and be more obviously Korean. North Koreans are told he was born in a secret military camp on the sacred Paektu Mountain on 16th February 1942 right on the Chinese border, to enhance his “Koreanness”. 

Fast facts about Kim Jong-il:

- does not urinate or defecate.

- on his first game of golf, he shot 38 under par and got 11 holes in one. 

- Once had a scheme to solve the food issue by breeding giant rabbits 

- Was rumoured to be the world’s single largest buyer of Hennessy cognac, at around $700k per year 

- He and his father Kim Il-sung created the world and control the weather 

- Rumoured to have sent all the little people in Pyongyang to islands to eradicate their “inferior” genes. He lured them using pamphlets for wonder-growth drugs. This stems from his own height-related complex. He was 5’3”, and regularly wore huge platform shoes to disguise this. 

- Oh, and he also did the same with disabled people. 

- At the moment of his birth, the seasons spontaneously changed from winter to spring, and rainbows appeared. 

- The entire world celebrates his birthday with festivals and parties. 

- Kim Jong-Il invented the hamburger, or more specifically the “double bread and meat”. American influence is so low that apparently this worked. He claims that he developed this meal to ensure university students had enough nutrition for their studies. 

- He had his boyhood school demolished for teaching regular students and not just those of the elite. 

- He looooooooves films, especially western films, and especially James Bond. Rumours swirl that he believes they are documentaries. He owns a collection in excess of 20,000 foreign movies, in addition to enthusiastically promoting NK cinema: mostly ham-fisted, ideologically driven craziness. 

- Kim had a staff of women to inspect the rice that he ate to ensure that every grain was uniform in length, plumpness and colour. 

- He also had a fondness for donkey meat, importing it specially. 

- He was apparently afraid of being addicted to a substance. When he quit smoking, he banned it from his home, office, and every other place he visited. About 40% of NK smokes. 

- When he fell off a horse and was given painkillers for his injuries in 1992, he insisted that a circle of assistants close to him were also injected. That way, should he become addicted, he wouldn’t be the only one. 

- He once challenged his Japanese chef to a jet ski race, where he insisted that his chef “take it seriously”. The chef beat him – maybe the first time that Kim had lost a contest – and Kim begrudgingly accepted it. A month later, he challenged the chef again, except this time he was using a much larger jet ski, which a much larger engine, and he won easily. 

- Also at the time of this jet ski fun time, thousands of North Koreans were starving to death in the flood-ravaged north. 

- Kim is an economic genius, using North Korean taxes to import German cars, Czech beer, Uzbekistani caviar and Swedish prostitutes while his citizens live in almost universal poverty. 

- Kim is one of the world’s foremost innovators, having invented the microwave oven, radial tyre and the hologram.

- From Kim’s official biography: “In 1964 he graduated from the Kim Sung Il University where legend has it he wrote 1,500 books, all of which are stored in the state’s library. It is also said that he wrote six operas, all of which are better then any in the history of music.”   

- According to assorted official sources, the Dear Leader learned to walk by the age of three weeks, talk by eight weeks, and wrote his first (but by no means last) manifesto on the future of the Korean people by age two. 

- According to a NK newspaper, quoting a conveniently anonymous French fashion design who raved about Kim’s taste in clothes. “People around the world are attracted to and following not only the jacket our Great Leader is wearing, but also his attitude, facial expressions, hand gestures, and even his handwriting.” 

- Some of his many personal titles: Shining Star of Paektu Mountain, Guiding Sun Ray, Dear Leader, Great Leader, Respected Leader, Brilliant Leader, Sun of Socialism, The Great Sun of Life, Great Man Who Descended From Heaven, Invincible And Ever-Triumphant General and Highest Incarnation of the Revolutionary Comradely Love. 

- Apparently waitresses working in North Korean restaurants in Pyongyang and abroad are required to have the highly-coveted double-eyelid surgery to make them more appealing, thus increasing hard-currency earnings. 

- He had a bit of a knack for violence, and Western intelligence suspects he masterminded assorted terrorist attacks across Asia, almost exclusively targeting South Koreans. 

- He also has a penchant for public spectacle. In the late 90s a plot hatched by NK generals was uncovered, and the conspirators arrested. After interrogation, they were brought to the 150,000-capacity May Day Stadium, doused in petrol and set alight. 

 

***

 

To give a sense of what sort of discussions the younger Kim was raised amongst, here is a series of incidents perpetrated by the Kims.  There was no further outbreak of large-scale conflict, but plenty of isolated incidents and scallywag behaviour from both sides, mostly the North. And things varied from crazily serious to crazily petty. For instance, during the talks that ended the Korean War, they had a daily-escalating bigger-flag competition.

Every day, in the super-serious discussion room where the most powerful people on the whole peninsula decided the fate of those countries, the flags of each country would grow slightly larger, just to stick it to their rival. Eventually blanket-sized flags were being hung up and taken down each day as an assertion of dominance.

So Kim Il-sung built an entirely fake village named Kijong-dong right on the border to show off the economic paradise that communism can definitely provide, in a doomed effort to lure Southerners across from their squalid hellhole of incredible first-world country. The village is totally and completely uninhabited, with no windows and electric lights that operate on a timer to give the illusion of occupancy. Not to be outdone in one-upmanship bullshit, SK built Taesong-dong just a mile away. Residents don’t pay tax, but aren’t allowed to leave - ironically North Korean defectors would feel right at home.  

In the 80s, the flag-related nonsense returned with a 323ft pole being erected in the middle of Taesong-dong for the purposes of taunting. Kim responded with a 525ft monster in Kijong-dong – then the largest in the world – and hoisted a flag weighing hundreds of kilograms. SK conceded. 

In 2004, with defection from SK to the North not being quite what was hoped, a new tack was taken: psychological warfare. Loudspeakers at Kijong-dong blasted propaganda for 20 hours a day, including anti-Western speeches, operas, marching music and other such joyfulness. There has been no reported increase in defection. 

In 2014, bombs of a new type were dropped on NK: chocolate. Some context: Choco pies were used as a form of currency amongst NK workers, unused to such sweet treats in their diets. The NK government responded by promptly outlawing such western lavishness, causing activists in the south to regularly send helium-balloons across the border, just filled to the brim with decadence. And nudity. 

Somebody in SK “discovered” a video allegedly showing Kim Jong-un’s wife, Ri Sol Ju having sex (the identity of the man, as in all adult films, is irrelevant). The resemblance is there, although pixelated and maybe relying a little too heavily on the “all Asians look the same” trope. Anyway, SK printed up screenshots from the flick and sent them across the border, hoping to damage a megalomaniacal dictator’s reputation. 

NK responded with literal shit: used toilet paper, cigarette butts, trash of all kinds and cleverly-worded leaflets dubbing SK the “republic of garbage”. 

NK sent agents to seduce and bear SK diplomat's babies, to be used as blackmail and political leverage.  

NK tried to create its own time zone. Because that was obviously the one thing keeping it from achieving socialist greatness.

But it’s not all fake towns and amateur pornography: peppering the 60-odd years is quite a list of actual violence, any one of which could have easily started the war afresh. 

In 1968 NK flat out tried to assassinate the SK president. A commando unit made its way to the president’s residence where a firefight erupted. The situation went haywire with commandos fleeing to multiple locations. All told, there were 26 dead and 66 SK wounded, with all but two of the commandos killed in turn. At almost the same time, NK captured the USS Peublo – a US navy science vessel. Somehow, despite all these outright abuses on peace, Kim Il-sung kept NK from being wiped off the map by the free world. 

In 1969 a SK airliner was hijacked by NK soldiers. Apparently for fun. 

In 1988 Seoul was chosen as the host of Olympics. NK didn’t like that, and tried to organise a communist boycott. When that failed, which is like that annoying 10 year old who lives a few doors down from you trying to organise a riot, they bombed another plane. 

The “tree trimming incident” was the unprovoked killing of two US army officers in 1976. The men were cutting down a tree near the border and then assaulted by about 20 NK guards with axes and clubs. Because nothing says "communist utopia" quite like brutal close-combat gang-murder. 

Because there is not even the pretext of giving a shit about what the world thinks of them, the NK government is free to embrace the childish antics expected from a spoilt kid with a tough older brother: he’s free to stir as much shit up as he likes, because big bro will pound anyone who touches him. Except in this case the big brother is nuclear weapons, and the Kims have proven alarmingly eager to press big red buttons with twitching, sticky fingers. 

In latter years the focus has shifted from ideologically-driven bloodshed to something much more noble: the desperate attempt to acquire hard currency.  The Fatherland has launched a number of operations all with the express goal of raising US dollars to prop up the regime.

In the 2000's, a strange chain of NK-themed restaurants popped up across Asia, offering a glimpse into how culturally-deprived, brainwashed NK agents think marketing works. The restaurants offer a wide variety of traditional NK cuisine (including dog soup), as well as assorted traditional medicine quackery. It’s also a known front for money-laundering of dirty money from other sources… 

…like methamphetamine. Yep, much like your dropkick cousin's roommate and every B-grade comic routine, Kim has turned to the production of hard drugs to generate cashflow. The scheme is suspected to be the work of the mysterious “Office 39” – the Kim’s own organisation dedicated to the more outright illegal of their schemes, again, mostly aimed at revenue-raising.

A diplomat-turned-defector alleges that quantities of high quality, highly valuable, highly illegal substances are regularly sent to diplomats abroad, who are tasked with the sale and then return of the cash. South Korean authorities estimate that around 3,000 kg of illicit drugs are manufactured under government supervision, equating to be between $100-200 million dollars in income. And that's not including any of their other drug manufacturing sidelines, including Viagra.

NK is heavily involved in the counterfeit industry, specifically of US currency and brand-name cigarettes. Despite being almost cartoonishly incompetent at most other activities (oppression and hunger notwithstanding), the NK have proved to be so good at making dollar bills that the US State Department refers to them as ‘supernotes’, because they’re just about identical to the real thing. NK agents funnel them into the American economy, exchanging them and making off with hundreds of thousands of real dollars for the state coffers. This is also believed to be the handiwork of Office 39. 

They dug a tunnel underneath the demilitarised zone, with all its pesky landmines, presumably in an attempt to launch a surprise attack. The tunnel included a banner that decreed “Down with American Imperialists”, so it looks a bit…aggressive. The tunnel was promptly discovered and pointed questions were asked regarding its purpose. NK responded with “it’s a coal mine”. With an overly political banner. And no coal to be seen. When further questions were asked, NK sent some agents in there armed with black paint to create “proof”. Which was super duper successful. 

NK is so desperate for friends – any friends – that they just yank people into their glorious socialist paradise, whether the new friends wanted to go. Assorted Japanese and Americans at the worryingly-named “Bridge of No Return” used to be regularly pulled through the border-door and into NK. How amazing that nobody ever thought of that before! 

One day Kim Jong-il decided that the one thing keeping his glorious state from being internationally recognised and praised was film, and promptly set about fixing it. He kidnapped a famous SK director Shin Sang-ok and his recently estranged actress wife Choi Eun-hee and jailed them. They tried to escape, unsurprisingly, were caught and put into solitary confinement as punishment. 

After four years, during which each believed the other to be dead, he forced them to reunite on the set of his own communist version of the movie Godzilla, called Pulgasari, who is corrupted by greed and capitalism and eventually turns on the very people he was created to protect. What a subtle allegory! Anyway, Choi and Shin work together and make this trainwreck of a movie, fall back in love, and eventually escape together at last while promoting the film in Europe. The irony of the creation of the movie being better than anything Kim Jong Il could dream up is almost certainly lost on the great creative mind of the Dear Leader. 

Apparently South Korea lures defectors across the border with offers such as job training and basic life skills, as well as a cool $15k bonus in the first year. Not many Northerners need much of an incentive to flee, I’m sure… 

Assorted craziness about North Korean Society: 

A large part of schooling education revolves exclusively around the Kim family, rather than things that are commercially useful/economically viable. 

You know those huge demonstrations made by thousands of people acting in perfect step? Training starts at primary school, and on weekends, and messing up a routine is a caneable offence. 

Possession of subversive, Western devices such as mobile phones, DVD players and modern non-NK movies are punishable by death/gulag/whatever the arresting officers decide. Despite the ban, most North Koreans are aware that the rest of the world isn’t exactly as Kim Jong-un desperately asserts it to be. Thus the theme of much of the propaganda has apparently changed to something similar to the Taliban: “We are the true bearers of Korean culture, America is raping everywhere else!” When you share marketing strategies with Islamist terrorism, maybe you’re not the most democratic nation in the world. 

The NK Government still insists to be democratic. It is not. There is three major political parties, but all are part of the “Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland”, which is dominated by Kim’s Worker’s Party of Korea. Only one candidate is on the ballot paper, and voters can only approve or disapprove of said candidate. If you’d like to officially disapprove, you have to go to a separate voting station, where your identity is revealed. Probably not a good idea. 

Gulags are still a thing in NK. Stalin isn’t the only one to just love him some oubliette-style action. It’s estimated about 1 in every 185 North Koreans is a political prisoner – as many as 130,000 men, women and children are held in political prison camps without charges or trial. There are 4 known such camps, creatively entitled Camp 14, Camp 15, Camp 16 and Camp 25. The numbering system is presumably used to confuse westerners who try to penetrate the secret code the Kims have implemented… 

As you might imagine, camp life is great. Prisoners are forced to withstand severe beatings, solitary confinement, malnutrition (with rats, snakes, grass and bark all reportedly being regularly eaten), public executions for attempted escapees, zero healthcare, less-than-stellar sanitation, rampant sexual abuse, and other such luxuries. All of this with no judicial process, little chance of ever getting out, and a sporting chance that you were thrown in there on a whim anyway. 

What might get you thrown into such a hell on earth? I’m glad you asked! 

    Wrong-doing – political dissent or criticism of the regime. 

    Wrong-thinking – expression of ideas considered to be counter to official ideology. 

    Wrong-knowledge – being exposed to such ideas. Just exposure. 

    Wrong-class background – having a link to the middle class during the Japanese occupation. 

    Wrong-association – being related to anyone who is guilty of these “crimes” 

Oh and up to three generations of the same family can be imprisoned for one instance of the above “crimes”, and almost certainly any number of further infringements. 

Those deemed to have performed some action that may in some lights be construed as perhaps representing a marginal state of dissatisfaction with North Korea as a whole simply have government men/soldiers turn up to their house. The neighbours watch as the family (often a family) packs their meagre belongings into a van at gunpoint and are then driven away, likely never to be heard from again. No subtlety. No confusion. The government has no interest in such potential misinterpretation of what’s going on. 

Executions are public, taking place in stadiums in front of thousands. Because what else are you going to do on a Saturday afternoon?

Kim Jong Un 

- exact birth date is a mystery – either 8th January or 5th July 1984. 

- his teen romance with a North Korean singer is said to have been ended on orders of his father. Some speculate that his new wife Ri Sol-ju, is the same woman “rebranded” by the government. 

- Like his father, loves American basketball, and has entertained numerous stars including Denis Rodman. 

- According to an official state website biography, he does not defecate, like his father. 

- Rumours swirl of having had several plastic surgeries to enhance his resemblance to his grandfather Kim Il-sung. 

- He was said to travel with a group of beautiful woman whom he refers to as his “pleasure squad”. 

So far the third Kim to rule North Korea has been living up to expectations, and maintaining the image of "unhinged nuke-wielding man-child" cultivated by his late father.

From what I can tell much of the awfulness in North Korea is almost an afterthought. It’s deliberately executed, sure, but the primary goals of the government is still to hold desperately on to power and to abuse the privilege of responsibility for its own gain, lining the pockets of the ruling class and crushing all those beneath under imported boot heels.  

And to think the South could have achieved similar status, had they but unified!