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Speaker 1: Hmm, what's Dick Taton? My denizens of totalitarian Regime? This

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Speaker 1: is Robert Evans hosted Behind the Bastards, the podcast with

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Speaker 1: the worst introductions in the podcasting game. Today we are

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Speaker 1: going to be talking about the Kims, the family that

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Speaker 1: has ruled North Korea for three quarters of a century.

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Speaker 1: And my guest today is Eli Olsburg, comedian, writer and

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Speaker 1: host of the podcast Closure and Pod is a woman. Uh, Eli,

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Speaker 1: Sophie is not there to be ashamed at me for

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Speaker 1: my terrible introduction this week? Would you please react with

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Speaker 1: with with shame and horror at my my hack is? Ways?

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Speaker 1: Is that is that too low key? Just? That was perfect?

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Speaker 1: That was perfect? That was perfect. Thank you so much,

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Speaker 1: thanks for having me. Yeah, thanks for being on. How's

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Speaker 1: your Uh? What do you what do you? What do

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Speaker 1: you think of the Kims, the jong Uns and the

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Speaker 1: jong Ills and ill songs of it all? Uh? Well,

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Speaker 1: you know It's funny is recently since that climate change

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Speaker 1: the report came out, I've gotten so fatalistic about all

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Speaker 1: of it. Uh. And for people listening, I'm sure you

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Speaker 1: know what I'm talking about. In case you don't. Uh,

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Speaker 1: there was like a few climate change reports that came

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Speaker 1: out that like now have guaranteed that by civilization will

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Speaker 1: be will like crumble due to climate change, and so

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Speaker 1: I'm like, man, I feel like at this point, everyone's

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Speaker 1: just gonna whatever we thought of them now, which is

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Speaker 1: not necessarily great. Uh the amount of you know, I mean,

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Speaker 1: they're obviously I don't even know where to start. I'm

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Speaker 1: so fucking jumbled about because I didn't know that's what

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Speaker 1: we're gonna be talking about. And whoo, I've got thoughts, um,

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Speaker 1: But overall, I'm just like, funk, we have thirty years left.

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Speaker 1: What the fuck? I don't know whether to look at

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Speaker 1: it that with more nihilism and just not acknowledge it

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Speaker 1: or be more upset about it. Do you know what

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Speaker 1: I mean? Well, yeah, I mean we're all in this

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Speaker 1: situation in the modern world where there's there's so many

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Speaker 1: garbage fires all around us. It's like it is even

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Speaker 1: worth putting out the one next to me because there's

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Speaker 1: this other one that's even bigger, or like there's so

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Speaker 1: many garbage fires that like you can't even put out

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Speaker 1: just one. It's just like everything around you is burning. Uh.

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Speaker 1: That is a frustration. Um. But at the same time,

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Speaker 1: I think there's value in learning about these people, especially

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Speaker 1: when they're people who, um, I think have been gotten

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Speaker 1: consistently wrong by sort of mainstream reporting on it. I

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Speaker 1: can say pretty clearly that the Kim family is one

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Speaker 1: of the most requested subjects for an episode of this podcast,

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Speaker 1: and has been since I started doing it. And I

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Speaker 1: think the reason so many people want an episode or

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Speaker 1: episodes about the Kim family is because of the kind

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Speaker 1: of stories that you hear about them on the news,

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Speaker 1: These like crazy tales of when Kim Jong Il would

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Speaker 1: be like, oh, I went golfing for the first time

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Speaker 1: and got eleven holes in one and then quit the

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Speaker 1: sport having mastered it. And like you, you hear these

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Speaker 1: wacky claims, and you assume that an episode about these

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Speaker 1: guys is just gonna be like one wacky fact after

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Speaker 1: the other. Um and so like yeah, And I also

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Speaker 1: think that you know what, it always is a thing

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Speaker 1: that like kind of and the reason more people I

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Speaker 1: think probably got curious. I don't think it's a coincidence

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Speaker 1: that when the interview came out. I think a lot

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Speaker 1: of people in America were suddenly like, Oh, this is

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Speaker 1: someone we should be concerned with because it's Uh, it's

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Speaker 1: because they're in a movie, and not only that, but

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Speaker 1: they don't want the movie to come out. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: I think that we'll be talking about the inner view

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Speaker 1: summon this because it's actually there's some pretty important stuff there.

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Speaker 1: But I think in general, um, this is not going

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Speaker 1: to be the episode that people who clicked on this

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Speaker 1: excitedly hoping to hear a bunch of wacky North Korea

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Speaker 1: stories are expecting, because I don't think the Kim family

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Speaker 1: is what most people think they are. And I I

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Speaker 1: I think, in particular, Kim Jong un, the current ruler

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Speaker 1: of North Korea, UM, is a very different person than

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Speaker 1: most people expect um. And I find that really interesting,

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Speaker 1: and I think he's an important person to understand because

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Speaker 1: he has a major role in our our whole international

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Speaker 1: clusterfuck at the moment um. But yeah, that's what we're

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Speaker 1: gonna we're gonna talk about today is is the history

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Speaker 1: of the Kim family in as much detail as I

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Speaker 1: can reasonably give it now. Like, one of the problems

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Speaker 1: about covering these particular people is that a huge amount

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Speaker 1: of what we read about in the news about North

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Speaker 1: Korea are lies, and they're often lies about lies. Uh,

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Speaker 1: and even like when there's just so much misinformation that

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Speaker 1: that's out there, A lot of it's put out by

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Speaker 1: the regime. Other of it's is put out by like

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Speaker 1: sources in South Korea, sources in the United States. But

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Speaker 1: like actually parsing out what's real about the lives of

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Speaker 1: any of the people in the Kim dynasty is really

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Speaker 1: difficult to do. And I've done the best possible I

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Speaker 1: think here, but this is gonna have I'll say right now,

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Speaker 1: this will have a higher percentage of things that ten

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Speaker 1: years from now I look at and realize like, oh

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Speaker 1: that wound up not being true, just because there's so

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Speaker 1: much bullshit that gets put out about this family and

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Speaker 1: about what goes on in North Korea. So it's this

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Speaker 1: is this is a tough one, um I because like

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Speaker 1: I don't think that, uh, I think anyone where there's

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Speaker 1: like a dictatorship that where it's that heavy, where it's

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Speaker 1: like truly, I mean, if you really think about it,

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Speaker 1: there's not even any kind of like like here's a

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Speaker 1: better example, and not to specifically with like if you're

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Speaker 1: going back to movies, if you look to certain cinema,

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Speaker 1: you never hear anything heavy about North Korean cinema. That's

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Speaker 1: how much of a vice is pressing down you know

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Speaker 1: what I mean, Like you because even within Iran during

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Speaker 1: certain periods you know, cinema there still movies managed to

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Speaker 1: get out and have not only did they get out,

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Speaker 1: but they had a huge impact. And you know that

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Speaker 1: has never happened to my North Korea. You know. The biggest,

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Speaker 1: the the clearest way you can sort of put like

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Speaker 1: you can sort of display the differences between like Iran

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Speaker 1: and North Korea is that I know a shipload of

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Speaker 1: people who live in the United States or US citizens

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Speaker 1: and come from an Iranian background who regularly visit Iran

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Speaker 1: and go back to see their Hamley family. Nobody North

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Speaker 1: Koreans who make it out of North Korea don't get

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Speaker 1: to do that. You don't get to go back into

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Speaker 1: North Korea and then go live your life in the

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Speaker 1: US or wherever. Like yeah, Like that's a really clear

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Speaker 1: and so that's part of why up until very recently,

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Speaker 1: there's been almost no good information that you could get

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Speaker 1: out of the country other than what little came out

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Speaker 1: from like refugees who fled um. A lot of listeners

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Speaker 1: will probably remember how at the end of May nineteen,

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Speaker 1: reputable outlets around the world reported that Kim Jong un

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Speaker 1: executed several of his envoys to the United States after

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Speaker 1: failing to conclude a nuclear deal with the Trump administration UM,

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Speaker 1: and then five days later, evidence arose that the people

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Speaker 1: who had been executed were actually alive and there were

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Speaker 1: pictures of them. So like, it's it's so much of

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Speaker 1: the time, like what we hear winds up not being true,

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Speaker 1: And it's hard to say if it's like where the

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Speaker 1: error came in, if it was UM North Korea putting

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Speaker 1: out disinformation purposefully or the uh, some other power wanting

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Speaker 1: there to be a disinformation. That's going to be like

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Speaker 1: an running theme in this episode, and it's a running

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Speaker 1: theme in Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to cut

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Speaker 1: you off. I was just gonna say that. I think that,

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Speaker 1: like on top of that, there's also just the misinformation

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Speaker 1: that comes out with everybody trying to break a news story. UM.

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Speaker 1: I mean, that's a small percentage of it, but it's

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Speaker 1: still a percentage nonetheless, you know. Yeah, numerous stories have

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Speaker 1: been released about Kim Jong un, who is the current

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Speaker 1: dictator UM. There have been tales that he got so

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Speaker 1: fat eating Swiss cheese, that he can't see his penis,

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Speaker 1: stories that he takes snake venom to help with his

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Speaker 1: erections uh, and most notoriously claims that he had his

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Speaker 1: uncle executed by feeding him to starving dogs. Um. And

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Speaker 1: just for an example of how misinformation percolates out, that

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Speaker 1: story about him feeding his uncle to dogs came out

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Speaker 1: of a Chinese satirical news website, like a Chinese equivalent

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Speaker 1: of the Onion um and then foreign journalists who didn't

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Speaker 1: know what the Chinese site was reported it as fact.

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Speaker 1: And that's not an uncommon thing. Um wow. So yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: you get a lot stories like that when you start

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Speaker 1: digging into the old Kim's um And so I want

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Speaker 1: to lead this episode off by thanking a journalist named

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Speaker 1: Anna Fifield who's the author of a really good new

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Speaker 1: book that I just read called The Great Successor UM

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Speaker 1: And it's a book mostly about Kim Jong Un and

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Speaker 1: Fifield what impresses me about her is number one, She's

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Speaker 1: traveled in North Korea a lot of times over the

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Speaker 1: course of more than a decade. But she also, to

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Speaker 1: write this book, traveled all around the world and talked

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Speaker 1: directly with people who raised Kim Jong un when he

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Speaker 1: was a kid, people who went to school with him,

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Speaker 1: people who knew him as he was growing up. Um,

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Speaker 1: and so as far as like a verifiable history of

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Speaker 1: this guy, I think she's done the best job that

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Speaker 1: I've come across. And like, that's part of why I

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Speaker 1: was able to do this episode is I found her

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Speaker 1: book and finally felt like I had something solid to

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Speaker 1: grab onto and knew that I wasn't going to be

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Speaker 1: taken in by a bunch of satirical Chinese UH comedy

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Speaker 1: articles that got misinterpreted as real. Yeah, and also big

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Speaker 1: thanks to the Kim family that will be joining us

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Speaker 1: in monument. I'm just kidding. Yeah. Yeah, So let's let's

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Speaker 1: get into this. If I'm going to give people a

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Speaker 1: useful history of the Kim dynasty, I think we have

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Speaker 1: to start with Kim Jong UN's grandfather, Kim Il sung.

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Speaker 1: On October fourteenth five, more than a hundred thousand people

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Speaker 1: filled the streets of downtown Pyongyang to celebrate the liberation

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Speaker 1: of their country from Japanese occupation forces. Now, North Korea

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Speaker 1: was at that point under the protection and governance of

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Speaker 1: the U s s R. And on that fateful day,

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Speaker 1: a Soviet general addressed the crowd and introduced them to

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Speaker 1: someone who would later be the new leader of their country,

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Speaker 1: Comrade Kim Il Sung. The North Korean crowd was surprised

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Speaker 1: to see a heavy set young man in his thirties

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Speaker 1: take the podium and address their new nation. People were

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Speaker 1: shocked by his appearance because Kim Il Sung, like I said,

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Speaker 1: was kind of a heavy set dude. He looked like

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Speaker 1: a soft, lazy government bureaucrat, which is more or less

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Speaker 1: what he was. But Soviet propaganda up into this point

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Speaker 1: had been sort of hyping him up to the people

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Speaker 1: as a badass guerilla fighter who had spent years battling

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Speaker 1: the Japanese and the mountains and working towards the liberation

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Speaker 1: of his people. According to the South China Morning Post quote,

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Speaker 1: his real name was not Kim Il Sung, but Kim

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Speaker 1: Sung Kai. He was born in nineteen twelve into a

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Speaker 1: Presbyterian family that was comfortably off. His father was a

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Speaker 1: teacher and an elder in at the church. In nineteen twenty,

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Speaker 1: like many other Koreans, they moved to Manchuria to escape

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Speaker 1: famine and Japanese rule. His father died in nineteen twenty six.

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Speaker 1: He attended the un Middle School in Jilan from nineteen

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Speaker 1: seven and nineteen thirty when he was arrested for subversion

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Speaker 1: and imprisoned for several months. By nineteen thirty five, he

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Speaker 1: joined the anti Japanese guerilla war. His greatest moment came

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Speaker 1: in June nineteen thirty seven, when his unit of two

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Speaker 1: hundred men captured a small Japanese held town in Korea

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Speaker 1: for a few hours. By the end of nineteen forty,

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Speaker 1: the Japanese had killed his fellow commanders and many of

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Speaker 1: his men. Those who remained crossed the Amor River into

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Speaker 1: the Soviet Union. And that's the extent of Kim Il

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Speaker 1: Sung's career as a mountain warrior. Um. So he's billed

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Speaker 1: as the guy who was responded stable for orchestrating the

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Speaker 1: campaign to oust the Japanese government, and sort of portrayed

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Speaker 1: as being an equivalent to like Ho Chi minh Um,

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Speaker 1: But the reality is that he was just kind of

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Speaker 1: a mid level guerilla leader and by the end of

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Speaker 1: the fighting was just one of the only ones who

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Speaker 1: was left alive. But he he didn't really have much

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Speaker 1: of a career actually fighting the Japanese, not a coincidence

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Speaker 1: that he comes from privilege of course, no, uh no,

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Speaker 1: and not a coincidence like he didn't he didn't spend

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Speaker 1: much time in North Korea itself until he was thirty

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Speaker 1: uh and he actually didn't speak the language very well.

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Speaker 1: He spoke Russian better than Korean. Um So yeah, yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: When he gave his first speeches, they were actually written

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Speaker 1: in Korean for him by Soviet uh speech writers who

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Speaker 1: knew the language better and were able to like crafted

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Speaker 1: for him. So that's how sort of yeah, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's exactly kind of what goes on here, um So Kim.

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Speaker 1: After he fled into the Soviet Union before the Japanese

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Speaker 1: were kicked out of Korea, he spent most of his

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Speaker 1: time on a Russian military base, where he was trained

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Speaker 1: as a captain in the Red Army and remained until

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Speaker 1: the end of the war. He had his first son

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Speaker 1: on that army base, Kim Jong il uh, in February

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Speaker 1: of nineteen forty one. But that's not the history most

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Speaker 1: North Koreans know. According to North Korean history books, Kim

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Speaker 1: Jong ill was born in February sixteenth, nineteen forty two,

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Speaker 1: in a secret military base on the Korean Mountain h

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Speaker 1: Pike two, which is like a sacred mountain there. Um.

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Speaker 1: And the reason that they changed the date is so

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Speaker 1: that his birth date would be a year that ends

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Speaker 1: into because his dad was born in a year that

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Speaker 1: ended into and they wanted it to be like, yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's more, that's more corporate posturing. Yeah, yeah, it's branding.

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Speaker 1: It's Brandon Yeah yeah. Now, as I as I stated,

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Speaker 1: Kim Il sung had not been a major figure in

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Speaker 1: the Korean Communist Party prior to the country's liberation of Japan.

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Speaker 1: He was like kind of a mid level dude, and

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Speaker 1: the story of how he came to rule the country

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Speaker 1: anyway is a typical tale of of all in era. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: branding would be a really good way to look at it. Um.

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Speaker 1: He started angling for the job when he was in

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Speaker 1: that Russian military base, but Moscow at first felt he

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Speaker 1: was too ambitious and didn't want to risk giving him

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Speaker 1: the gig. So Stalin and his guys initially back to

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Speaker 1: dude named Schoman Seek who was a nationalist who'd run

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Speaker 1: a non violent reformist movement under the occupation. His big

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Speaker 1: inspirations were Leo Tolstoy and Mahatma Gandhi. But Cho wasn't

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Speaker 1: interested in being a puppet of the U. S s R.

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Speaker 1: He wanted a North Korea to be an independent country. UM.

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Speaker 1: And so the Soviets started to kind of sour on

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Speaker 1: this guy more and more as the time to release

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Speaker 1: North Korea as an independent nation drew closer and they

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Speaker 1: realized that he didn't want to be you know, essentially

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Speaker 1: their their man in Pyongyang. UM, so Kim il sung

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Speaker 1: sort of slid into this gap that started to form

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Speaker 1: between Chow and Uh the Russian or the Soviet leadership. UM.

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Speaker 1: And the way he did this was by buying shiploads

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Speaker 1: of liquor and prostitutes for the Soviet generals who were

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Speaker 1: managing North Korea at this point and throwing them big

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Speaker 1: raucous parties, which worked, you know. I mean he's a

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Speaker 1: big opportunist, is what it sounds like. Which is the

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Speaker 1: only way you get to a place like that. I

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Speaker 1: don't think there's any way you can get there by

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Speaker 1: being any shred of a decent person. No, And it

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Speaker 1: sounds like Cho was too honest about what he wanted

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Speaker 1: for his people and what he thought was best for

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Speaker 1: North Korea, whereas Uh Kim Il Sung was kind of

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Speaker 1: that I'm going to tell these people whatever they need

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Speaker 1: to hear to to put me in that job. Uh.

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Speaker 1: And it worked, It worked out great for him. The

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Speaker 1: Soviets had Kim Il Sung deliver a speech test written

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Speaker 1: by Soviet officials. Uh. The speech did not go well. Um.

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Speaker 1: Show's secretary later described him as speaking in a duck

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Speaker 1: like voice, with a haircut like a Chinese waiter. Uh.

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Speaker 1: He was said to look like a fat delivery boy

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Speaker 1: from a neighborhood Chinese foodstall. Others called him a fraud

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Speaker 1: or a Soviet stooge. So he was not. You know,

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Speaker 1: initially it didn't look like uh, you know, he he'd

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Speaker 1: succeeded in sort of charming some of the Soviets, but

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Speaker 1: he just had zero charisma. Um. So again like it,

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Speaker 1: it looks like kind of a long shot at the start. Um.

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Speaker 1: But Show keeps making more and more demands for real

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Speaker 1: independence for North Korea as the months go on, and

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Speaker 1: eventually Stalin gets fed up with it and has that

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Speaker 1: guy arrested and disappeared into a gulag somewhere. So yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: Kim Il sung gets promoted a number of times in

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Speaker 1: the last few days. Of the Soviet occupation, and on

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Speaker 1: September the Democratic People's Republic of Korea was officially founded,

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Speaker 1: with Kim Il sung as its leader. In less than

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Speaker 1: a year, he adopted the title Great Leader and started

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Speaker 1: having statues built in his honor. He rewrote the history

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Speaker 1: book so that his first speech was written down as

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Speaker 1: a tremendous success rather than him looking like an overweight waiter. Um.

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Speaker 1: But by the way, I just want to say, that's

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Speaker 1: always funny to me whenever, um, these kinds of takeovers

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Speaker 1: happened and they call it something democratic. Yeah, like that, Yeah,

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Speaker 1: that's ridiculous. Yeah, it's the same thing with like putting

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Speaker 1: family and your your political organization. Like yeah, there's some

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Speaker 1: words that always signaled that they mean the opposite, and

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Speaker 1: like yeah, that's that's definitely one of them. Um, Because yeah,

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Speaker 1: there was no there was no democracy at work here. Um,

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Speaker 1: there was no nobody went to the North Korean people

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Speaker 1: and was like, do you guys, uh, what should be

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Speaker 1: in charge? And to be super fair, uh, there was

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Speaker 1: not really democracy in South Korea at this point, which

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Speaker 1: is an important thing to note. So North and South

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Speaker 1: Korea had been officially split by the US and the

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Speaker 1: USS are. At the end of World War Two, you've

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Speaker 1: probably heard of the thirty Parallel, the line that divides

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Speaker 1: the two nations to this day. The line was actually

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Speaker 1: picked by an American colonel Dean Rusk and another army

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Speaker 1: officer when they grabbed a national geographic map and just

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Speaker 1: sort of drew a line in a place that looked

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Speaker 1: good to them. Um. And because nobody in the Soviet

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Speaker 1: Union really cared that much at the time, they said

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Speaker 1: it was fine, um And so like North Korea and

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Speaker 1: South Korea were created without anybody really thinking about why

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Speaker 1: the border had been drawn where it was. Um. Yeah, yeah.

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Speaker 1: It's uh, it's like a Sykes Pico kind of story

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Speaker 1: where you just have these two powers who like they've

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Speaker 1: got so much else on their hands after like every

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Speaker 1: they're all focused about like splitting up Germany, right, the

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Speaker 1: U S and the U s s are like, nobody

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Speaker 1: gives a shit about Korea at this point, so they

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Speaker 1: like they just draw, have two guys draw a line

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Speaker 1: on a map, and uh, the US says, yeah, that

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Speaker 1: seems good, and the Soviets say, yeah, that seems good,

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Speaker 1: and uh, nobody thinks anymore about picture. Like someone just

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Speaker 1: put on a blindfold and they're like, all right, just

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Speaker 1: go with the marker man. And then they were like

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Speaker 1: that's it, we got it, you know what I mean,

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Speaker 1: Like it's a weird flip of the coin meant story

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Speaker 1: that uh yeah, that's wild. Yeah yeah, nobody like that.

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Speaker 1: There's literally like that that that almost is more planning

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Speaker 1: than they put into it, because at least then somebody

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Speaker 1: would have had to find blindfolds. There's some logistical uh

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Speaker 1: like uh necessity and in at least that. UM. So,

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Speaker 1: once he gets into power, Kim Il sung kind of

357
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Speaker 1: feels shaky and at number one, there's a lot of

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Speaker 1: other people who are guerilla leaders during uh the occupation

359
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Speaker 1: who aren't big fans of his um he doesn't really have.

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Speaker 1: He's seen as maybe being sort of a Russian you know,

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Speaker 1: uh agent at this point because he owes his power

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Speaker 1: to them, and he feels like he needs more than

363
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Speaker 1: statues of himself to solidify his rule. He needs a war,

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Speaker 1: and the best way for him to sort of lock

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Speaker 1: himself in as the leader of North Korea for life,

366
00:18:36,480 --> 00:18:39,960
Speaker 1: he thinks, is to take over South Korea. UM. So

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Speaker 1: he starts pushing Stalin to let him invade South Korea

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Speaker 1: and reunify the peninsula. UM. And you know, Stalin at

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Speaker 1: this point in North Korea is essentially under the thumb

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Speaker 1: of both the USSR and China because obviously it shares

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Speaker 1: its big border with China. It was reliant on the

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Speaker 1: Soviet Union for all of its food and aid and

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Speaker 1: resources and what so like, they couldn't really do anything

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Speaker 1: without the approval of both countries. So kim Ilson goes

375
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Speaker 1: to Stalin is like, I want to take over South Korea,

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Speaker 1: and Stalin kind of does the whole go ask your

377
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Speaker 1: mother sort of thing, and it's basically like if Mao

378
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Speaker 1: z Dung says it's okay, then like, well it'll be fine,

379
00:19:18,640 --> 00:19:20,719
Speaker 1: like then I'll then I'll I'll sign onto it. So

380
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Speaker 1: kim Ilson goes to mal and he eventually gets both

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Speaker 1: dictators on board, and on June nineteen fifty, the North

382
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Speaker 1: Korean People's Army invades South Korea UM. And this is

383
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Speaker 1: a really successful invasion at that point because the South

384
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Speaker 1: Korean military did not exist in a super organized way.

385
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Speaker 1: So within a matter of weeks they basically conquer everything

386
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Speaker 1: but one city in South Korea called Boussan UM. So

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Speaker 1: they come very close in the early days of the

388
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Speaker 1: war to just knocking South Korea out as a country

389
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Speaker 1: and unifying the Korean peninsula. Yeah, very very close. Uh.

390
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Speaker 1: The United States rushed in reinforced mints and the Battle

391
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Speaker 1: of Pussan Perimeter was fought, leading to more than a

392
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Speaker 1: hundred and twenty thousand casualties on both sides. The United States,

393
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Speaker 1: you know, continued to send in more and more men,

394
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Speaker 1: including the fifth Regimental Combat Team, which included my grandfather UH,

395
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Speaker 1: and in a series of daring landings and offensives, they

396
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Speaker 1: pushed the North Korean Army almost to China. Then China

397
00:20:18,760 --> 00:20:23,000
Speaker 1: counterattacked and UH pushed. The United States backed down past

398
00:20:23,040 --> 00:20:26,040
Speaker 1: the thirty eight parallel, and the Korean War turns into

399
00:20:26,080 --> 00:20:29,359
Speaker 1: a big, ugly ship show. A tremendous number of people died,

400
00:20:29,720 --> 00:20:32,679
Speaker 1: mostly from bombing campaigns carried out by the United States.

401
00:20:33,080 --> 00:20:36,159
Speaker 1: Are bombers leveled by some counts, eighty five percent of

402
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Speaker 1: the structures in North Korea, So that's not just eighty

403
00:20:39,359 --> 00:20:43,720
Speaker 1: five percent of its industry. Eight of all buildings in

404
00:20:43,760 --> 00:20:47,480
Speaker 1: the country are gone. US bomber commanders late in the

405
00:20:47,520 --> 00:20:50,840
Speaker 1: Korean War complain about not having targets to hit because

406
00:20:50,840 --> 00:20:54,040
Speaker 1: there's just nothing left in the country. I love that

407
00:20:54,080 --> 00:20:56,560
Speaker 1: it's a complaint and not a not They didn't state

408
00:20:56,560 --> 00:20:58,800
Speaker 1: it as a fact or like we're running out of

409
00:20:58,800 --> 00:21:01,840
Speaker 1: stuff and I'm and I'm bored, I got nothing, i

410
00:21:01,880 --> 00:21:04,040
Speaker 1: got nothing to drop my bombs on. I'm just bombing

411
00:21:04,040 --> 00:21:08,639
Speaker 1: nonsense at this point. Yeah, it was an unspeakably devastating

412
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Speaker 1: war for the North and obviously it ended in essentially

413
00:21:11,280 --> 00:21:14,359
Speaker 1: a stalemate, not even really peace. North Korea lost at

414
00:21:14,440 --> 00:21:17,359
Speaker 1: least ten percent and maybe as many as like twenty

415
00:21:18,480 --> 00:21:22,600
Speaker 1: of its pre war population in the fighting. Just absolutely devastating,

416
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Speaker 1: um apocalyptic violence, and the sheer scale of the devastation

417
00:21:28,640 --> 00:21:32,000
Speaker 1: that's wrought on North Korea allows Kim Il sung to

418
00:21:32,520 --> 00:21:35,600
Speaker 1: not just hang into power but reinforce his own power

419
00:21:36,160 --> 00:21:40,120
Speaker 1: um because number one, just the disastrous losses suffered give

420
00:21:40,200 --> 00:21:42,199
Speaker 1: him like he's able to pick people who were his

421
00:21:42,720 --> 00:21:45,880
Speaker 1: enemies in the in the Korean military to blame them

422
00:21:45,920 --> 00:21:48,080
Speaker 1: for all of the deaths and like have those people

423
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Speaker 1: executed and purged. And so by the end of the war,

424
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Speaker 1: North Korea is about as wrecked as a country has

425
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Speaker 1: ever been. But Kim Il Sung's power is fucking locked down.

426
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Speaker 1: So that's where we are when the Korean War ends, uh,

427
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Speaker 1: nineteen fifty three. I believe, yeah, because I remember being

428
00:22:10,840 --> 00:22:15,080
Speaker 1: short but impactful, because you know, obviously I know the

429
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Speaker 1: US lost a lot of men there. Yeah, we lost

430
00:22:17,480 --> 00:22:20,399
Speaker 1: about thirty three thousand or thirty seven thousand dead in

431
00:22:20,440 --> 00:22:22,440
Speaker 1: that war, which is you know, only about twenty or

432
00:22:22,480 --> 00:22:24,880
Speaker 1: so thousand off from the number who died in Vietnam,

433
00:22:25,040 --> 00:22:28,439
Speaker 1: which lasted more than three times as long. UM. So

434
00:22:28,480 --> 00:22:31,520
Speaker 1: it's very short. Like for an example of how brutal

435
00:22:31,560 --> 00:22:35,200
Speaker 1: it was, my grandpa was one of the first soldiers who,

436
00:22:35,440 --> 00:22:37,679
Speaker 1: like one of the first American soldiers who landed in

437
00:22:37,800 --> 00:22:39,760
Speaker 1: Korea fighting in the war. He was there the whole war.

438
00:22:40,240 --> 00:22:43,000
Speaker 1: He landed in Korea as a sergeant and he left

439
00:22:43,040 --> 00:22:46,040
Speaker 1: as a major um because just so many of the

440
00:22:46,080 --> 00:22:48,680
Speaker 1: guys above him got killed or wounded that they were

441
00:22:48,720 --> 00:22:52,240
Speaker 1: just promoting anyone like they could to fill like spaces

442
00:22:52,240 --> 00:22:55,080
Speaker 1: in the leadership they needed, um, which isn't a thing

443
00:22:55,119 --> 00:22:58,680
Speaker 1: that really happens anymore, but yeah, it did back then.

444
00:22:59,520 --> 00:23:01,520
Speaker 1: So it's it's a it's an ugly war, and it's

445
00:23:01,680 --> 00:23:04,640
Speaker 1: ugliest for North Korea, Like they get hit by far

446
00:23:04,760 --> 00:23:09,040
Speaker 1: the hardest and our listeners are about to get hit

447
00:23:09,119 --> 00:23:14,320
Speaker 1: the hardest by some ads for products and services. This

448
00:23:14,359 --> 00:23:17,160
Speaker 1: is a really bad ad plug or the greatest ad

449
00:23:17,280 --> 00:23:20,879
Speaker 1: segue in the history of ads. I don't know which one. Yeah,

450
00:23:21,080 --> 00:23:26,280
Speaker 1: let's let these ads destroy eighty five of the buildings

451
00:23:26,840 --> 00:23:30,080
Speaker 1: in your heart. I don't know how to. I don't

452
00:23:30,080 --> 00:23:32,000
Speaker 1: know how to. I should have picked a different point

453
00:23:32,000 --> 00:23:33,640
Speaker 1: to lead us into ads from, but this is where

454
00:23:33,680 --> 00:23:36,120
Speaker 1: we are. You can't can't go back now. You look,

455
00:23:36,119 --> 00:23:39,199
Speaker 1: you're bombing them with capitalism. Yeah, we're bombing them with

456
00:23:39,240 --> 00:23:50,440
Speaker 1: capitalism by by our beautiful Dick Bills products. We're back, boy.

457
00:23:50,880 --> 00:23:54,440
Speaker 1: Those those nothing like some products and services to to

458
00:23:55,960 --> 00:24:00,000
Speaker 1: get you back into talking about the world's most uh

459
00:24:00,000 --> 00:24:03,399
Speaker 1: successful and long lived communist regime. The next sideway should

460
00:24:03,440 --> 00:24:07,560
Speaker 1: be And speaking of dictatorships, here's our You know damn it,

461
00:24:07,640 --> 00:24:11,760
Speaker 1: you're right, there's right in the name. I'm so frustrated

462
00:24:11,800 --> 00:24:13,920
Speaker 1: that it took you mentioning that for me to realize

463
00:24:13,920 --> 00:24:17,840
Speaker 1: there was a Dick Pills dictator. Well, it hit me

464
00:24:17,880 --> 00:24:21,119
Speaker 1: afterwards and I was like, I was a beat too late, man,

465
00:24:21,359 --> 00:24:23,760
Speaker 1: I can't believe it took me this long to have

466
00:24:23,840 --> 00:24:30,119
Speaker 1: that idea. Um, well that's a shame anyway. So, uh,

467
00:24:30,520 --> 00:24:33,160
Speaker 1: North Korea is super fucked up at the end of

468
00:24:33,480 --> 00:24:36,720
Speaker 1: the Korean War. UM, but this winds up actually being

469
00:24:36,800 --> 00:24:38,399
Speaker 1: sort of a benefit to in the same way that

470
00:24:38,440 --> 00:24:42,520
Speaker 1: like Japan, because it was so devastated after World War Two. UM,

471
00:24:42,560 --> 00:24:45,240
Speaker 1: a bunch in Germany, a bunch of like foreign aid

472
00:24:45,320 --> 00:24:47,440
Speaker 1: went in and rebuilt all the industry, and they wound

473
00:24:47,480 --> 00:24:50,560
Speaker 1: up with like brand new factories, brand new everything, and

474
00:24:50,600 --> 00:24:53,480
Speaker 1: it's set them up to become an economic powerhouse. That

475
00:24:53,600 --> 00:24:55,359
Speaker 1: kind of happens to North Korea in the wake of

476
00:24:55,359 --> 00:24:58,000
Speaker 1: the Korean War. China and the USS are flood the

477
00:24:58,040 --> 00:25:00,879
Speaker 1: country with resources and they rebuild the na fational industries.

478
00:25:01,440 --> 00:25:04,200
Speaker 1: And this will surprise most people because we think about

479
00:25:04,200 --> 00:25:07,040
Speaker 1: North Korea as dirt poor in South Korea, as you know,

480
00:25:07,080 --> 00:25:10,919
Speaker 1: opulence and wealthy. But up until the mid nineteen seventies,

481
00:25:11,040 --> 00:25:14,000
Speaker 1: North Korea had a larger economy and in many ways

482
00:25:14,040 --> 00:25:17,320
Speaker 1: a higher quality of life than South Korea. That's like

483
00:25:17,359 --> 00:25:20,760
Speaker 1: the first twenty years of Kim Il Sung's reign. UM.

484
00:25:20,840 --> 00:25:22,800
Speaker 1: And there are a number of reasons for this. Uh.

485
00:25:22,880 --> 00:25:25,960
Speaker 1: The short explanation is that North Korea contains almost all

486
00:25:26,040 --> 00:25:30,080
Speaker 1: of the peninsula's industrial resources coal and steel and fuel.

487
00:25:30,320 --> 00:25:32,600
Speaker 1: All the valuable ship is in the north. The South

488
00:25:32,680 --> 00:25:36,400
Speaker 1: is traditionally Korea's agricultural heartland, and for those first couple

489
00:25:36,440 --> 00:25:40,040
Speaker 1: of decades, South Korea was also basically run by a dictatorship.

490
00:25:40,560 --> 00:25:44,240
Speaker 1: So for a long time after the Korean War, a

491
00:25:44,280 --> 00:25:47,760
Speaker 1: lot of people who lived in South Korea might have thought, like,

492
00:25:48,119 --> 00:25:50,040
Speaker 1: we made it. We really fucked up by not going

493
00:25:50,119 --> 00:25:52,320
Speaker 1: up north. Um like it that you could have. You

494
00:25:52,359 --> 00:25:53,840
Speaker 1: could have thought felt for a while that like the

495
00:25:53,840 --> 00:25:55,600
Speaker 1: people who wound up in the north of the country

496
00:25:55,960 --> 00:25:59,280
Speaker 1: got a better deal, um, because it seemed that way

497
00:25:59,359 --> 00:26:02,520
Speaker 1: until the events when the trend starts to reverse itself

498
00:26:02,640 --> 00:26:06,959
Speaker 1: very fucking quickly, South Korea industrializes at an incredibly rapid

499
00:26:07,040 --> 00:26:09,159
Speaker 1: rate uh. And then their g d P, their quality

500
00:26:09,200 --> 00:26:12,040
Speaker 1: of life and the level of actual like they they

501
00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:15,000
Speaker 1: become a functional democracy as well. And also I just

502
00:26:15,000 --> 00:26:16,760
Speaker 1: want to say that one thing that I think people

503
00:26:17,240 --> 00:26:21,240
Speaker 1: um forget is that even within these places there's still

504
00:26:21,240 --> 00:26:24,720
Speaker 1: an insane class divide. It's just that middle class was

505
00:26:24,760 --> 00:26:28,640
Speaker 1: a more feasible thing back then. Maybe, but I feel like, uh,

506
00:26:28,680 --> 00:26:32,520
Speaker 1: I mean obviously, and also resources to information and truly

507
00:26:32,560 --> 00:26:34,480
Speaker 1: knowing what North Korea was like you were only seeing

508
00:26:34,520 --> 00:26:37,480
Speaker 1: what was coming in newsreels in front of um movies

509
00:26:37,680 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 1: or radio commercials. And you know, however, people got their

510
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:42,720
Speaker 1: media back then. But I think that like a lot

511
00:26:42,760 --> 00:26:46,520
Speaker 1: of those places still um, you know, even if people

512
00:26:46,600 --> 00:26:48,359
Speaker 1: look like they were living while they were still poor

513
00:26:48,400 --> 00:26:53,040
Speaker 1: people in those places. Yeah, and that's part of why

514
00:26:53,080 --> 00:26:56,040
Speaker 1: that that like, that's part of why people in the

515
00:26:56,080 --> 00:26:58,439
Speaker 1: North might have been for a chunk of this period

516
00:26:58,480 --> 00:27:01,600
Speaker 1: happier than people in the South because, uh, the North

517
00:27:01,640 --> 00:27:04,840
Speaker 1: had more resources to put into kind of a functional

518
00:27:04,960 --> 00:27:07,520
Speaker 1: sort of social welfare state than the South did for

519
00:27:07,520 --> 00:27:10,760
Speaker 1: a chunk at this time. Um. But that again, that

520
00:27:10,800 --> 00:27:14,240
Speaker 1: starts to really reverse itself in the seventies. But the

521
00:27:14,280 --> 00:27:16,919
Speaker 1: first twenty years or so of Kim Il sung's reign

522
00:27:17,280 --> 00:27:19,600
Speaker 1: they're seen still today by the people who remember them

523
00:27:19,600 --> 00:27:22,560
Speaker 1: as like the golden years of North Korea, uh, and

524
00:27:22,640 --> 00:27:25,919
Speaker 1: those the memory of those years is the cornerstone of

525
00:27:25,920 --> 00:27:28,520
Speaker 1: of the power that the Kim family wields to this day.

526
00:27:28,640 --> 00:27:30,480
Speaker 1: And that's a big part of why Kim Il sung

527
00:27:30,800 --> 00:27:34,119
Speaker 1: is remembered so fondly even today in North Korea, whereas

528
00:27:34,200 --> 00:27:36,720
Speaker 1: Kim Jong il really isn't, and it's a big part

529
00:27:36,720 --> 00:27:40,080
Speaker 1: of the reason why Kim Jong un is is like

530
00:27:40,359 --> 00:27:43,320
Speaker 1: he ties himself more to his grandpa than his dad.

531
00:27:43,400 --> 00:27:45,920
Speaker 1: He doesn't primarily bill himself as the son of Kim

532
00:27:46,000 --> 00:27:49,200
Speaker 1: Jong ill he uh propaganda emphasizes how much he looks

533
00:27:49,200 --> 00:27:51,520
Speaker 1: like his grandpa. There's even rumors that he got plastic

534
00:27:51,560 --> 00:27:54,800
Speaker 1: surgery to resemble his grandfather, Like he dresses the same,

535
00:27:54,880 --> 00:27:58,359
Speaker 1: Like he's very much trying to put on this um

536
00:27:58,400 --> 00:28:00,159
Speaker 1: still to this day, trying to put forward this idea

537
00:28:00,200 --> 00:28:02,040
Speaker 1: of like I'm going to bring us back to the

538
00:28:02,040 --> 00:28:07,240
Speaker 1: good days, you know, when my grandpa was in charge. Yeah,

539
00:28:07,320 --> 00:28:10,160
Speaker 1: make North Korea great again. He's he's really hearkening back

540
00:28:10,160 --> 00:28:13,280
Speaker 1: to that um. It's important to understand in order to

541
00:28:13,359 --> 00:28:16,520
Speaker 1: understand sort of like how things are angled to this

542
00:28:16,640 --> 00:28:20,520
Speaker 1: day by the Kim regime in North Korea. So, starting

543
00:28:20,520 --> 00:28:23,680
Speaker 1: in the nineteen seventies, Kim Il sung crafted a policy

544
00:28:23,760 --> 00:28:26,960
Speaker 1: for his people called Jewish. The basic idea of Jewish

545
00:28:27,359 --> 00:28:29,879
Speaker 1: is similar to the desire for autar key expressed by

546
00:28:29,880 --> 00:28:33,400
Speaker 1: Adolf Hitler in the pre war years. It's an ideology

547
00:28:33,520 --> 00:28:36,879
Speaker 1: that the Korean people should and can be totally independent

548
00:28:37,000 --> 00:28:39,720
Speaker 1: from the world outside of their borders. They don't need

549
00:28:39,800 --> 00:28:43,480
Speaker 1: anything from other people. Um. Now, Jewish is not a

550
00:28:43,560 --> 00:28:47,600
Speaker 1: really coherent ideology because I, for one thing, ignores the

551
00:28:47,600 --> 00:28:50,400
Speaker 1: fact that North Korea was from the beginning deeply dependent

552
00:28:50,480 --> 00:28:54,160
Speaker 1: on primarily food aid from the USS are and from China.

553
00:28:54,200 --> 00:28:57,120
Speaker 1: Because remember the Korean peninsula, which had been unified for

554
00:28:57,200 --> 00:28:59,800
Speaker 1: most of history. The South provides the food, the North

555
00:29:00,000 --> 00:29:02,840
Speaker 1: as the industrial resources. So on its own, the North

556
00:29:02,880 --> 00:29:06,400
Speaker 1: can't really grow that much food. Um, so they don't

557
00:29:06,440 --> 00:29:09,880
Speaker 1: They're they're Jewish. Is more of a propaganda campaign than

558
00:29:09,920 --> 00:29:12,400
Speaker 1: it's an example of like how North Korea actually functions

559
00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:15,520
Speaker 1: because for up until the collapse of the Soviet Union,

560
00:29:15,520 --> 00:29:18,400
Speaker 1: they're deeply dependent on the country for food aid, um,

561
00:29:18,440 --> 00:29:20,520
Speaker 1: and their economy is really dependent on having these other

562
00:29:20,520 --> 00:29:24,840
Speaker 1: communist countries to sell to. You know. Jewish is how

563
00:29:24,920 --> 00:29:29,200
Speaker 1: Kim Ilsong wants people to think about North Korea and

564
00:29:29,320 --> 00:29:32,920
Speaker 1: sort of its relationship to the world. That's again like

565
00:29:32,960 --> 00:29:36,840
Speaker 1: a fucking brand thing there. Yeah, it is a brand thing, absolutely,

566
00:29:36,960 --> 00:29:40,000
Speaker 1: and it's crazy because like also I think, uh, any

567
00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:43,080
Speaker 1: country at this point. What's really wild about it is

568
00:29:43,120 --> 00:29:46,480
Speaker 1: like when people go for this whole concept of independence.

569
00:29:46,920 --> 00:29:50,760
Speaker 1: I Thankfully, more time goes on, I think people realize

570
00:29:50,920 --> 00:29:54,640
Speaker 1: that's not the case with really anywhere, uh true like

571
00:29:54,680 --> 00:29:58,080
Speaker 1: true independence. But again, it was that period where like

572
00:29:58,160 --> 00:30:04,440
Speaker 1: I think specifically the I think until about I'll say,

573
00:30:04,520 --> 00:30:07,040
Speaker 1: and that's like an estimate. But up until that point,

574
00:30:07,080 --> 00:30:10,080
Speaker 1: it was so easy to pull this kind of bullshit,

575
00:30:10,320 --> 00:30:13,320
Speaker 1: like where you could you could just like put a buzzword.

576
00:30:13,360 --> 00:30:14,920
Speaker 1: I mean, you can still do that well into the

577
00:30:14,920 --> 00:30:18,120
Speaker 1: eighties and nineties, and it's happening now obviously, and like

578
00:30:18,320 --> 00:30:20,840
Speaker 1: just with memes or people phrases people use, but I

579
00:30:20,880 --> 00:30:23,920
Speaker 1: mean in terms of like implementing these things on a

580
00:30:24,000 --> 00:30:28,400
Speaker 1: on a national scale like that, it was so effortless

581
00:30:28,480 --> 00:30:30,320
Speaker 1: to just be like, all right, how can we get

582
00:30:30,360 --> 00:30:35,320
Speaker 1: people to you know what whatever the key word is? Yeah, yeah,

583
00:30:35,400 --> 00:30:39,080
Speaker 1: And that's uh like that's part of why he adopts

584
00:30:39,120 --> 00:30:42,600
Speaker 1: this ideology is you know, in the mid seventies and

585
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:46,960
Speaker 1: into the eighties, the South pulls way ahead of North Korea,

586
00:30:47,040 --> 00:30:50,040
Speaker 1: and suddenly there's no comparing the two countries. And that's

587
00:30:50,040 --> 00:30:52,120
Speaker 1: a big reason why you want, if your Kim il

588
00:30:52,200 --> 00:30:55,280
Speaker 1: sung to emphasize independence and why we don't need anyone

589
00:30:55,320 --> 00:30:58,400
Speaker 1: else is because you don't want your people seeing the

590
00:30:58,440 --> 00:31:02,520
Speaker 1: outside world now that uh, it's become increasingly clear that

591
00:31:02,560 --> 00:31:06,320
Speaker 1: they're doing better than you. Right, absolutely, Oh my god,

592
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:11,239
Speaker 1: that's the that's the like every man, I don't even

593
00:31:11,240 --> 00:31:13,760
Speaker 1: know how to articulate this, but like that is I

594
00:31:13,800 --> 00:31:17,360
Speaker 1: think the key to most like it's like trying to

595
00:31:17,440 --> 00:31:21,640
Speaker 1: keep every country as um blindfolded as possible until the

596
00:31:21,640 --> 00:31:25,520
Speaker 1: blindfold officially comes off. That it's essentially like they're making

597
00:31:25,560 --> 00:31:28,440
Speaker 1: a backup plan for when that finally happens, because it's

598
00:31:28,480 --> 00:31:33,400
Speaker 1: not sustainable. Yeah, and it's you know, it's normally not sustainable.

599
00:31:33,640 --> 00:31:36,000
Speaker 1: One of the things that's interesting about North Korea is

600
00:31:36,040 --> 00:31:39,760
Speaker 1: there the only country of its type that has sustained something. Yeah,

601
00:31:39,960 --> 00:31:43,880
Speaker 1: you're right, Actually, that's a great it's happening. Yeah, it's

602
00:31:43,920 --> 00:31:46,480
Speaker 1: really That's the most remarkable thing about this story is

603
00:31:46,520 --> 00:31:49,040
Speaker 1: that Kim il sung number one, he has the goal

604
00:31:49,120 --> 00:31:52,120
Speaker 1: that all smart dictators have, which is to die peacefully

605
00:31:52,160 --> 00:31:56,760
Speaker 1: at home. Um number two he has the goal to

606
00:31:57,240 --> 00:32:00,920
Speaker 1: pass on rule to his son, Kim Jong ill um,

607
00:32:01,040 --> 00:32:03,840
Speaker 1: which no other There's not a single case of another

608
00:32:03,920 --> 00:32:09,719
Speaker 1: communist leader successfully passing on UH rule to their like,

609
00:32:09,840 --> 00:32:12,320
Speaker 1: to the to their own children, to their heir. Like obviously,

610
00:32:12,320 --> 00:32:13,720
Speaker 1: that didn't happen in the U S s R. And

611
00:32:13,800 --> 00:32:16,400
Speaker 1: in fact, like the the idea of having a cult

612
00:32:16,400 --> 00:32:18,560
Speaker 1: of personality faded in the U S s R. After

613
00:32:18,560 --> 00:32:20,920
Speaker 1: Stalin's death, and they were like they they opened up

614
00:32:20,920 --> 00:32:23,640
Speaker 1: and liberalized in a lot of ways after that. You

615
00:32:23,680 --> 00:32:26,400
Speaker 1: don't see that in North Korea. And the reason why

616
00:32:26,640 --> 00:32:31,080
Speaker 1: is because Kim Jong un is a masterful does a

617
00:32:31,120 --> 00:32:34,280
Speaker 1: masterful job of preparing his nation for the idea that

618
00:32:34,320 --> 00:32:37,840
Speaker 1: there will be no break and continuity between the generations.

619
00:32:38,160 --> 00:32:39,640
Speaker 1: So I'm going to read a quote from the Great

620
00:32:39,640 --> 00:32:42,520
Speaker 1: Successor that talks about sort of how he goes about

621
00:32:42,560 --> 00:32:46,840
Speaker 1: this process. The nineteen seventy edition of North Korea's Dictionary

622
00:32:46,840 --> 00:32:50,800
Speaker 1: of Political Terminology stated that hereditary secession is a reactionary

623
00:32:50,800 --> 00:32:55,400
Speaker 1: custom of exploitative societies that was quietly dropped from future publications.

624
00:32:55,640 --> 00:32:58,640
Speaker 1: State media started referring to the Party center, a phrase

625
00:32:58,720 --> 00:33:01,680
Speaker 1: used to obliquely refer to Kim Jong il's activities without

626
00:33:01,680 --> 00:33:04,480
Speaker 1: explicitly stating his name, and Kim Jong ill began to

627
00:33:04,520 --> 00:33:07,760
Speaker 1: be promoted up the Workers Party hierarchy. The North's allies

628
00:33:07,800 --> 00:33:10,400
Speaker 1: picked up on Kim ilsung's plans early on the east.

629
00:33:10,400 --> 00:33:13,360
Speaker 1: German ambassador to Pyeong Yang cabled the Foreign Ministry in

630
00:33:13,440 --> 00:33:16,280
Speaker 1: nineteen seventy four to say that North Koreans were being

631
00:33:16,320 --> 00:33:19,200
Speaker 1: asked to swear loyalty to Kim Jong Ill at workers

632
00:33:19,240 --> 00:33:22,160
Speaker 1: Party meetings across the country in case something grave might

633
00:33:22,200 --> 00:33:25,440
Speaker 1: happen to Kim Il sung. So that starts in the

634
00:33:25,480 --> 00:33:28,520
Speaker 1: mid nineteen seventies, and it only escalates as the nineteen

635
00:33:28,560 --> 00:33:33,040
Speaker 1: eighties and nineteen nineties roll along. Um. And you know,

636
00:33:33,240 --> 00:33:35,720
Speaker 1: one of the other things that happens throughout the nineteen

637
00:33:35,720 --> 00:33:38,440
Speaker 1: eighties and nineteen nineties is that it becomes increasingly obvious

638
00:33:38,520 --> 00:33:40,920
Speaker 1: to Kim Il Sung into Kim Jong Ill that none

639
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:44,560
Speaker 1: of the other communist family die anasties are going to last.

640
00:33:45,040 --> 00:33:47,720
Speaker 1: And in fact, yeah, like I said, no other communist

641
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:50,840
Speaker 1: states successfully handed down power from father to son um.

642
00:33:50,960 --> 00:33:53,200
Speaker 1: So it looks like in the eighties and nineties, it

643
00:33:53,280 --> 00:33:56,080
Speaker 1: looks like there's very long odds on Kim Jong Ill

644
00:33:56,200 --> 00:33:59,240
Speaker 1: actually taking power from his dad or staying in power

645
00:33:59,320 --> 00:34:02,520
Speaker 1: once he takes it. Most experts suspect that like after

646
00:34:02,640 --> 00:34:05,600
Speaker 1: Kim Ill Song dies, things are gonna sort of fall apart,

647
00:34:05,760 --> 00:34:08,600
Speaker 1: right um, which will not be the last time quote

648
00:34:08,640 --> 00:34:12,960
Speaker 1: unquote experts on North Korea predict stuff like this, UM,

649
00:34:13,040 --> 00:34:17,400
Speaker 1: and they ain't been right yet. Uh. So at the

650
00:34:17,440 --> 00:34:20,640
Speaker 1: sixth Workers Party Congress in Pyongyang in nineteen eighty, Kim

651
00:34:20,719 --> 00:34:23,880
Speaker 1: Jong ill has made the official successor UH and like

652
00:34:24,000 --> 00:34:26,640
Speaker 1: that is announced to the entire country. He begins to

653
00:34:26,680 --> 00:34:29,880
Speaker 1: accompany his father along and on the spot guidance tours,

654
00:34:30,040 --> 00:34:32,160
Speaker 1: where the two Kims will show up at farms and

655
00:34:32,200 --> 00:34:34,520
Speaker 1: factories and tell all of the people there how to

656
00:34:34,560 --> 00:34:37,200
Speaker 1: do the jobs that they did every day. Workers are

657
00:34:37,200 --> 00:34:40,080
Speaker 1: expected to take diligent notes as one career politician and

658
00:34:40,120 --> 00:34:43,080
Speaker 1: his drunken playboy's son UH tell them how to forge

659
00:34:43,080 --> 00:34:46,080
Speaker 1: steel and plow fields, which seems like and it's like

660
00:34:46,080 --> 00:34:48,840
Speaker 1: the worst episode of undercover. But I was just thinking,

661
00:34:48,840 --> 00:34:50,480
Speaker 1: I was like, this is the most wild thing I've

662
00:34:50,480 --> 00:34:52,960
Speaker 1: ever heard in my life, Like this is and truly,

663
00:34:53,520 --> 00:34:56,160
Speaker 1: you would never even catch a fucking CEO of any

664
00:34:56,200 --> 00:34:59,239
Speaker 1: company going to a place and being like, Okay, this

665
00:34:59,320 --> 00:35:05,080
Speaker 1: is how you make a latte. UM, And it's yeah,

666
00:35:05,120 --> 00:35:07,239
Speaker 1: it's so interesting to me that they do it this

667
00:35:07,239 --> 00:35:08,960
Speaker 1: way in North Korea because if you read about like

668
00:35:08,960 --> 00:35:12,120
Speaker 1: Saddam Hussein did, the literal opposite where he would he

669
00:35:12,160 --> 00:35:14,200
Speaker 1: would you know whether or not he actually did it.

670
00:35:14,320 --> 00:35:16,880
Speaker 1: He made sure that there were stories of him dressing

671
00:35:16,960 --> 00:35:19,920
Speaker 1: up in costume and like showing up at farmers houses

672
00:35:19,920 --> 00:35:22,719
Speaker 1: and factories to like see how people really thought about things,

673
00:35:22,719 --> 00:35:25,080
Speaker 1: which like that's an old that goes back like two

674
00:35:25,160 --> 00:35:27,680
Speaker 1: thousand years, and the stories of like Arab rulers is

675
00:35:27,719 --> 00:35:31,279
Speaker 1: like these Arab collapses and stuff, hiding among the peasantry

676
00:35:31,320 --> 00:35:33,480
Speaker 1: and trying to see how their lives really are, to

677
00:35:33,560 --> 00:35:36,000
Speaker 1: learn about how they can govern more justly. And it's

678
00:35:36,040 --> 00:35:38,640
Speaker 1: the opposite here, and you know what like that, but

679
00:35:39,239 --> 00:35:42,440
Speaker 1: it's a it's a relatability aspect that I bet some

680
00:35:42,480 --> 00:35:44,600
Speaker 1: people are just blown away that these guys are coming

681
00:35:44,640 --> 00:35:47,600
Speaker 1: here and and being you know, having a sense of

682
00:35:47,719 --> 00:35:50,319
Speaker 1: utility or whatever it is that they're you know, very

683
00:35:51,000 --> 00:35:52,879
Speaker 1: that they're like, oh, they're getting down there and they're

684
00:35:52,880 --> 00:35:55,200
Speaker 1: they're putting their hands in the mud, uh and and

685
00:35:55,239 --> 00:35:58,279
Speaker 1: getting dirty and and you know they're working and and

686
00:35:58,320 --> 00:36:00,359
Speaker 1: the fact is they're not. And it's almost the same.

687
00:36:00,880 --> 00:36:02,680
Speaker 1: Like the way I think of it is the way,

688
00:36:02,880 --> 00:36:05,600
Speaker 1: um when you know Trump is like I go to McDonald's.

689
00:36:06,640 --> 00:36:08,880
Speaker 1: Do you know how many people his fan base must

690
00:36:08,880 --> 00:36:11,319
Speaker 1: eat that up. No pun intended to be like, oh

691
00:36:11,360 --> 00:36:13,040
Speaker 1: my god, he's he goes to the same place as

692
00:36:13,080 --> 00:36:14,960
Speaker 1: I do. He gets it, so even though he's a billionaire,

693
00:36:15,320 --> 00:36:18,799
Speaker 1: he understands us. Yeah. That was one of the It

694
00:36:18,880 --> 00:36:20,799
Speaker 1: was really frustrating to me to see the way that

695
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:24,080
Speaker 1: um when he fed those like the fast food to

696
00:36:24,200 --> 00:36:26,560
Speaker 1: those kids, how it was handled by the media. Because

697
00:36:26,600 --> 00:36:30,000
Speaker 1: I grew up in like the Deep South, uh, and

698
00:36:30,560 --> 00:36:33,520
Speaker 1: I know that played well to a lot of his uh,

699
00:36:33,560 --> 00:36:36,279
Speaker 1: to a lot of his base totally. I mean it

700
00:36:36,400 --> 00:36:39,040
Speaker 1: started with my earliest memory of it when I was

701
00:36:39,120 --> 00:36:41,600
Speaker 1: in college, and even a little after that in the

702
00:36:41,719 --> 00:36:44,440
Speaker 1: in the last few years of the Bush presidency, I

703
00:36:44,440 --> 00:36:46,719
Speaker 1: remember people still were like, this is a guy you

704
00:36:46,719 --> 00:36:48,399
Speaker 1: could sit down and at least have a beer with.

705
00:36:48,480 --> 00:36:50,720
Speaker 1: And I was like, that is fucking crazy that that's

706
00:36:50,800 --> 00:36:54,480
Speaker 1: the takeaway. And not only that, like when the economy

707
00:36:54,560 --> 00:36:56,840
Speaker 1: is crumbling, then like you know what, maybe people we

708
00:36:56,840 --> 00:37:02,279
Speaker 1: should be having beers with shouldn't be run Yeah, yeah, yeah,

709
00:37:02,320 --> 00:37:05,399
Speaker 1: Well and it's uh, it's one of those things, like

710
00:37:05,520 --> 00:37:10,480
Speaker 1: one of the the big like that there's this emphasis

711
00:37:10,520 --> 00:37:13,960
Speaker 1: on the Kims as being um in the propaganda, as

712
00:37:14,000 --> 00:37:16,120
Speaker 1: being perfect and is obviously is knowing better than all

713
00:37:16,160 --> 00:37:19,160
Speaker 1: of their workers. But there's also this emphasis on how

714
00:37:19,160 --> 00:37:21,200
Speaker 1: hard they work, Like there's a lot of stories that

715
00:37:21,239 --> 00:37:23,520
Speaker 1: are put into the propaganda about them passing out from

716
00:37:23,520 --> 00:37:26,520
Speaker 1: exhaustion and going without sleep for days and like where

717
00:37:26,640 --> 00:37:28,279
Speaker 1: like that's like the way it was phrased when Kim

718
00:37:28,320 --> 00:37:30,360
Speaker 1: Jong ads he like he worked himself to death and

719
00:37:30,400 --> 00:37:33,560
Speaker 1: his heart gave out. So it is it is clearly

720
00:37:33,600 --> 00:37:37,280
Speaker 1: important for the regime that like the leaders be seen

721
00:37:37,520 --> 00:37:42,000
Speaker 1: as being as invested physically in the labor of of

722
00:37:42,000 --> 00:37:47,279
Speaker 1: of the country as like the actual people doing labor. Question. Yeah, uh,

723
00:37:47,320 --> 00:37:49,200
Speaker 1: And I don't know if this came up at any

724
00:37:49,200 --> 00:37:50,759
Speaker 1: point in any of the things you were doing. And

725
00:37:50,800 --> 00:37:53,200
Speaker 1: this isn't in regards to the interview, just in general,

726
00:37:53,239 --> 00:37:55,640
Speaker 1: which is that, uh is there mention of what the

727
00:37:55,719 --> 00:37:57,520
Speaker 1: arts are like? I feel like that's actually a place

728
00:37:57,600 --> 00:38:00,120
Speaker 1: a spot I realized I've never looked at, which is

729
00:38:00,160 --> 00:38:02,920
Speaker 1: what andy, because I you know, I referenced that early on.

730
00:38:03,000 --> 00:38:05,960
Speaker 1: But I do feel like that's usually a reflection of

731
00:38:06,040 --> 00:38:09,480
Speaker 1: how people perceive things there and obviously there's not a

732
00:38:09,520 --> 00:38:13,480
Speaker 1: freedom of artistic choice there. Yeah, I mean there's a

733
00:38:13,520 --> 00:38:16,440
Speaker 1: lot said in The Great Successor in particular about music

734
00:38:16,480 --> 00:38:19,520
Speaker 1: in North Korea and about its role and like UM

735
00:38:19,640 --> 00:38:22,359
Speaker 1: one of like they they have particular songs that they used,

736
00:38:22,400 --> 00:38:24,840
Speaker 1: Like when they were preparing Kim Jong n to take power,

737
00:38:24,840 --> 00:38:27,239
Speaker 1: there was a particular song called Footsteps that they would

738
00:38:27,280 --> 00:38:30,560
Speaker 1: play that was like the lyrics in the song were

739
00:38:30,600 --> 00:38:32,720
Speaker 1: supposed to kind of get people ready for the idea

740
00:38:32,760 --> 00:38:34,600
Speaker 1: that someone was going to take over from Kim Jong Ill.

741
00:38:34,719 --> 00:38:38,000
Speaker 1: So it is there's not freedom of in the arts there,

742
00:38:38,040 --> 00:38:40,239
Speaker 1: but there is a lot of emphasis placed on the arts.

743
00:38:40,560 --> 00:38:43,680
Speaker 1: It's also worth noting that the Kim family themselves, Kim

744
00:38:43,760 --> 00:38:47,040
Speaker 1: Jong il and his son and Kim Jong UN's brother, Um,

745
00:38:47,160 --> 00:38:51,399
Speaker 1: his surviving brother, are all huge Clapton fans, gigantic Eric

746
00:38:51,400 --> 00:38:55,759
Speaker 1: clapp fucking love Eric Clapp um, which like you know,

747
00:38:55,840 --> 00:38:58,600
Speaker 1: he's Eric Clapton, Like, I get it, like, but I

748
00:38:58,640 --> 00:39:01,839
Speaker 1: honestly think those guys, I've always thought that the people

749
00:39:01,840 --> 00:39:03,320
Speaker 1: who are usually at the at the top of the

750
00:39:03,320 --> 00:39:05,960
Speaker 1: food chain like that, who are who are suppressing art

751
00:39:05,960 --> 00:39:10,800
Speaker 1: in any way, UM probably consume most or I wouldn't

752
00:39:10,800 --> 00:39:13,920
Speaker 1: say most, because they're there, but a decent amount of

753
00:39:14,840 --> 00:39:16,880
Speaker 1: Western our Yampean cinema, all that stuff, and not on

754
00:39:16,920 --> 00:39:18,480
Speaker 1: a ton of it. I would venture to say they

755
00:39:18,480 --> 00:39:21,000
Speaker 1: probably like some of it. Oh they look they We'll

756
00:39:21,040 --> 00:39:23,120
Speaker 1: talk about that a lot. They're huge fans of it

757
00:39:23,200 --> 00:39:25,600
Speaker 1: the whole. Like I mean, Kim Il sung is. I

758
00:39:25,600 --> 00:39:27,919
Speaker 1: haven't heard anything about what he liked, but Kim Jong

759
00:39:27,960 --> 00:39:31,240
Speaker 1: ill and Kim Jong oon big fans of Western cinema,

760
00:39:31,360 --> 00:39:38,080
Speaker 1: music art, big Disneyland guys. Yeah, yeah, it's pretty pretty cool.

761
00:39:38,480 --> 00:39:42,000
Speaker 1: So uh. In one Kim Jong ill is pronounced the

762
00:39:42,120 --> 00:39:45,040
Speaker 1: leader of the Korean People's Army. Uh. Now, these were

763
00:39:45,040 --> 00:39:47,000
Speaker 1: the waning days of his father's regime, and they were

764
00:39:47,040 --> 00:39:49,799
Speaker 1: not good years for communism around the world. Uh. The

765
00:39:49,840 --> 00:39:52,440
Speaker 1: Soviet unions started falling apart in nineteen ninety one, and

766
00:39:52,480 --> 00:39:54,759
Speaker 1: it became increasingly clear that North Korea was about to

767
00:39:54,800 --> 00:39:58,040
Speaker 1: be standing alone for real. Kim Ill Song's ideas about

768
00:39:58,160 --> 00:40:01,040
Speaker 1: juice and independence would finally to be put to the test,

769
00:40:01,680 --> 00:40:04,160
Speaker 1: and the country did not handle being isolated well. The

770
00:40:04,200 --> 00:40:06,520
Speaker 1: collapse of the USSRM at North Korea lost one of

771
00:40:06,520 --> 00:40:09,280
Speaker 1: its major trading partners and its largest source of food.

772
00:40:09,600 --> 00:40:12,120
Speaker 1: This coincided with a series of mud slides that wiped

773
00:40:12,120 --> 00:40:14,279
Speaker 1: out huge amounts of the nation's crops and led to

774
00:40:14,360 --> 00:40:17,919
Speaker 1: mass starvation and even cannibalism among the populace. As many

775
00:40:17,960 --> 00:40:20,600
Speaker 1: as two million people may have died during this period.

776
00:40:20,920 --> 00:40:23,520
Speaker 1: The government's power began to crumble, and huge numbers of

777
00:40:23,520 --> 00:40:27,000
Speaker 1: North Korean started buying, selling, and smuggling and direct contravention

778
00:40:27,040 --> 00:40:30,120
Speaker 1: of the law. Jong Il and his father found themselves

779
00:40:30,120 --> 00:40:32,680
Speaker 1: in a precarious position. Kim Jong un knew that he

780
00:40:32,719 --> 00:40:35,400
Speaker 1: would die soon, and he had to find a safe

781
00:40:35,400 --> 00:40:37,680
Speaker 1: way to guarantee a safe transition of power for his son.

782
00:40:38,120 --> 00:40:40,080
Speaker 1: But how do you orchestrate that at a time when

783
00:40:40,080 --> 00:40:43,000
Speaker 1: your people are starving to death and mass like That's

784
00:40:43,040 --> 00:40:45,480
Speaker 1: the that's the big question Jong Un has to answer

785
00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:49,360
Speaker 1: in like the early nineteen nineties um and the answer

786
00:40:50,000 --> 00:40:52,000
Speaker 1: that he picked at least was to come up with

787
00:40:52,040 --> 00:40:55,879
Speaker 1: a lurid fairy tale about his family's origins. So I'm

788
00:40:55,880 --> 00:40:58,880
Speaker 1: gonna quote again from The Great Successor to bolster the

789
00:40:58,880 --> 00:41:01,759
Speaker 1: case for hereditary succes session in these challenging circumstances, the

790
00:41:01,800 --> 00:41:05,080
Speaker 1: regime created a fantastical story about Kim Jong Ill's providence

791
00:41:05,120 --> 00:41:08,320
Speaker 1: that borrowed heavily from both Korean mythology and Christianity. He

792
00:41:08,360 --> 00:41:10,520
Speaker 1: would be leader, not simply because he had been appointed

793
00:41:10,520 --> 00:41:12,680
Speaker 1: by his father, but because he had some divine right.

794
00:41:12,960 --> 00:41:16,200
Speaker 1: His birthplace became not a guerrilla camp, but Mount Pike to,

795
00:41:16,360 --> 00:41:18,640
Speaker 1: the volcano on North Korea's border with China that has

796
00:41:18,719 --> 00:41:21,400
Speaker 1: legendary status and Korean culture. It is said to be

797
00:41:21,440 --> 00:41:24,480
Speaker 1: the birthplace of Tangun, the mythical half bear, half deity

798
00:41:24,560 --> 00:41:27,640
Speaker 1: father of the Korean people. The creature conferred a heavenly

799
00:41:27,680 --> 00:41:30,000
Speaker 1: origin on the Korean people, and thanks to the story,

800
00:41:30,080 --> 00:41:32,640
Speaker 1: Kim Jong ill appeared to come from heaven to North

801
00:41:32,719 --> 00:41:35,480
Speaker 1: Korea's propagandists didn't stop there. They said that Kim Jong

802
00:41:35,520 --> 00:41:37,480
Speaker 1: ill was born in a wooden cabin and that a

803
00:41:37,560 --> 00:41:40,000
Speaker 1: single bright star shown in the sky at his birth.

804
00:41:40,239 --> 00:41:42,480
Speaker 1: They stopped short of making the building a manger or

805
00:41:42,520 --> 00:41:44,960
Speaker 1: his mother a virgin, but for good measure, they added

806
00:41:44,960 --> 00:41:48,279
Speaker 1: a double rainbow spontaneously appearing over the mountain. The myth

807
00:41:48,320 --> 00:41:52,160
Speaker 1: of the Holy Pike to bloodline was created. Wow. What's

808
00:41:52,160 --> 00:41:56,840
Speaker 1: amazing about that is that is exactly what the parallel

809
00:41:56,840 --> 00:42:00,320
Speaker 1: of religion here. Obviously that's not treated as um ethical

810
00:42:00,360 --> 00:42:03,080
Speaker 1: amount way, but it it It's the same difference as

811
00:42:03,560 --> 00:42:06,879
Speaker 1: like George W. Thinking God picked him to be president. Yeah,

812
00:42:06,960 --> 00:42:11,600
Speaker 1: and it's uh, it's a classical example of the kind

813
00:42:11,600 --> 00:42:14,680
Speaker 1: of thing that a regime puts out and and pushes

814
00:42:14,880 --> 00:42:18,120
Speaker 1: when it it feels insecure. Like that's why that's that's

815
00:42:18,120 --> 00:42:22,240
Speaker 1: when the crazy stuff starts to happen in North Korean propaganda. UM.

816
00:42:22,280 --> 00:42:24,440
Speaker 1: Because you don't see as much of that with Kim

817
00:42:24,480 --> 00:42:26,719
Speaker 1: il sung, Like you, he had a he had a

818
00:42:26,760 --> 00:42:30,359
Speaker 1: pretty wild cult of personality. Um, but it was kind

819
00:42:30,400 --> 00:42:34,319
Speaker 1: of in line with Stalin and other leaders of that era. UM.

820
00:42:34,400 --> 00:42:37,640
Speaker 1: Whereas it gets just fucking batty with Kim Jong Ill,

821
00:42:37,680 --> 00:42:40,279
Speaker 1: and it gets progressively battier. And it's because Kim Jong

822
00:42:40,360 --> 00:42:45,399
Speaker 1: ill comes to power as North Korea collapses completely. Um. So,

823
00:42:45,520 --> 00:42:47,720
Speaker 1: like one of the things that happens in the nineties

824
00:42:47,719 --> 00:42:50,640
Speaker 1: with everyone starving is that like bits and pieces of

825
00:42:50,680 --> 00:42:54,200
Speaker 1: capitalism into the country because the government can't like people

826
00:42:54,239 --> 00:42:57,000
Speaker 1: are starving and things are so bad, the government can't

827
00:42:57,000 --> 00:43:00,400
Speaker 1: stop people from from smuggling in food and setting up

828
00:43:00,440 --> 00:43:04,200
Speaker 1: rudimentary markets and stuff, and so like that becomes the

829
00:43:04,239 --> 00:43:07,040
Speaker 1: thing at this point in time, and they just don't

830
00:43:07,080 --> 00:43:09,279
Speaker 1: have a solid enough grip on power to fight it,

831
00:43:09,360 --> 00:43:12,600
Speaker 1: so instead they start pushing out ever more lurid and

832
00:43:12,680 --> 00:43:16,719
Speaker 1: wild propaganda, which is I'm sure how people got to

833
00:43:16,760 --> 00:43:20,480
Speaker 1: the point of like specifically Americans selling I mean they

834
00:43:20,480 --> 00:43:22,960
Speaker 1: had already done this when when Reagan was in office,

835
00:43:23,000 --> 00:43:27,040
Speaker 1: but you know, these like anti socialists, they treated socialism

836
00:43:27,040 --> 00:43:31,680
Speaker 1: and communism as like the ven diagram being a complete circle. Yeah,

837
00:43:31,680 --> 00:43:34,799
Speaker 1: and I'm sure this was a great paradigm for them

838
00:43:34,840 --> 00:43:37,920
Speaker 1: of how it's a failure. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's

839
00:43:38,000 --> 00:43:42,560
Speaker 1: one of those things, like it's uh, there are a

840
00:43:42,640 --> 00:43:44,759
Speaker 1: number of different ways to look at what's happened in

841
00:43:44,840 --> 00:43:48,360
Speaker 1: North Korea. UM. One of the best descriptions I've heard

842
00:43:48,480 --> 00:43:51,520
Speaker 1: of the uh the way that the state is organized

843
00:43:51,640 --> 00:43:56,000
Speaker 1: is that it is essentially like the whole state exists

844
00:43:56,160 --> 00:44:00,640
Speaker 1: to serve Uh. It's it's almost organized like a corporation

845
00:44:00,680 --> 00:44:03,920
Speaker 1: wherein the whole state exists to serve the Kim family

846
00:44:03,960 --> 00:44:06,239
Speaker 1: who are in like they're the like the couple of

847
00:44:07,120 --> 00:44:09,480
Speaker 1: people who are in power, who are like the actual

848
00:44:09,520 --> 00:44:13,719
Speaker 1: stakeholders in the regime. UM. That's that's one way you'll

849
00:44:13,760 --> 00:44:16,640
Speaker 1: see it framed. Like there's there's not a lot of

850
00:44:16,880 --> 00:44:20,160
Speaker 1: like with the Soviet Union and stuff. Um, there's none

851
00:44:20,200 --> 00:44:23,520
Speaker 1: of what you actually saw called for in like Marxist theory,

852
00:44:23,600 --> 00:44:26,160
Speaker 1: where like workers own the means of production, like that

853
00:44:26,200 --> 00:44:29,560
Speaker 1: does not happen whatsoever in North Korea or in the U.

854
00:44:29,600 --> 00:44:34,760
Speaker 1: S s R. Really, um so it's yeah, the uh

855
00:44:34,760 --> 00:44:38,680
Speaker 1: what it definitely shows is that, uh, when you have

856
00:44:39,000 --> 00:44:43,160
Speaker 1: a government um that, because of its belligerent policies, doesn't

857
00:44:43,239 --> 00:44:45,840
Speaker 1: trade with the rest of the world, and that government

858
00:44:46,200 --> 00:44:50,040
Speaker 1: can't grow enough food to feed its people, then those

859
00:44:50,040 --> 00:44:53,200
Speaker 1: people will do a better job of servicing their own

860
00:44:53,200 --> 00:44:55,920
Speaker 1: needs than the government can, which is like the same

861
00:44:56,000 --> 00:44:58,439
Speaker 1: story that you see out of It's the same story

862
00:44:58,440 --> 00:45:01,080
Speaker 1: that you see in a hurricane countr arena after like

863
00:45:01,160 --> 00:45:04,439
Speaker 1: FEMA fucked up in the first several weeks after like that,

864
00:45:04,520 --> 00:45:07,080
Speaker 1: where it's like the actual people who live there do

865
00:45:07,120 --> 00:45:09,000
Speaker 1: a better job of taking care of each other than

866
00:45:09,040 --> 00:45:14,359
Speaker 1: the government. It's it's actually almost like they took douche back. Yeah, yeah,

867
00:45:14,400 --> 00:45:17,680
Speaker 1: it it it is. It's like the actual people. Um.

868
00:45:19,000 --> 00:45:21,400
Speaker 1: Like the lesson that they could take out of that

869
00:45:21,480 --> 00:45:23,799
Speaker 1: is like we didn't actually need the regime because the

870
00:45:23,840 --> 00:45:26,920
Speaker 1: regime like we like we are capable of being independent

871
00:45:26,960 --> 00:45:28,880
Speaker 1: if the regime gets out of our way, which is

872
00:45:28,880 --> 00:45:32,960
Speaker 1: a great Yeah, which is a really constant reminder to

873
00:45:33,000 --> 00:45:37,840
Speaker 1: me of what a thin veil most advertisements, propaganda, like anything,

874
00:45:38,040 --> 00:45:41,560
Speaker 1: I'm talking politics, economics, All of it is between how

875
00:45:41,600 --> 00:45:45,640
Speaker 1: people are sold things very easily and how it's it

876
00:45:45,880 --> 00:45:49,040
Speaker 1: literally isn't that far off from because that's some people

877
00:45:49,040 --> 00:45:53,360
Speaker 1: talk about like revolutions being idealistic or not possible. I

878
00:45:53,360 --> 00:45:56,480
Speaker 1: would say this almost argues that it's much easier. It's

879
00:45:56,480 --> 00:45:59,719
Speaker 1: just a matter of mobilization or being pushed so far

880
00:46:00,520 --> 00:46:05,520
Speaker 1: that what happened happened. Yeah, and you you you do

881
00:46:05,680 --> 00:46:08,839
Speaker 1: see like pieces of that UM in North Korea never

882
00:46:08,840 --> 00:46:14,120
Speaker 1: develops into anything that threatens the stability of the regime itself. UM,

883
00:46:14,160 --> 00:46:18,440
Speaker 1: but it does alter like the it never goes back either.

884
00:46:18,640 --> 00:46:21,640
Speaker 1: Like once these once people get used to the idea

885
00:46:21,719 --> 00:46:25,400
Speaker 1: of running their own rudimentary markets and selling some of

886
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:27,880
Speaker 1: their own crops, and like one of the like you know,

887
00:46:28,080 --> 00:46:30,400
Speaker 1: a lot of people would get involved in like little

888
00:46:30,400 --> 00:46:34,120
Speaker 1: businesses where they were like harvest like corn husks and

889
00:46:34,120 --> 00:46:36,239
Speaker 1: make corn noodles and stuff and then sell them to

890
00:46:36,280 --> 00:46:38,319
Speaker 1: other people in towns that they could afford enough food

891
00:46:38,360 --> 00:46:41,560
Speaker 1: to eat. And like once people start doing that and

892
00:46:41,840 --> 00:46:46,319
Speaker 1: independently servicing their own needs. You can't go back to

893
00:46:46,400 --> 00:46:49,440
Speaker 1: the way things were beforehand. And that's like that that

894
00:46:49,440 --> 00:46:54,920
Speaker 1: that's definitely shown here. Um, it's time for ads uh.

895
00:46:55,239 --> 00:46:58,160
Speaker 1: We don't have another great lead in for ads uh,

896
00:46:58,239 --> 00:47:01,600
Speaker 1: but time for It's time for your everybody. Yeah, it's

897
00:47:01,640 --> 00:47:04,880
Speaker 1: time for you to be independent by buying the products

898
00:47:04,880 --> 00:47:15,400
Speaker 1: and services advertised on this show. Yeah, we're back, and

899
00:47:15,440 --> 00:47:20,160
Speaker 1: it's time we finally start talking about Kim Jong un. Uh. Now,

900
00:47:20,400 --> 00:47:23,400
Speaker 1: the boy who would retroactively be declared the latest member

901
00:47:23,400 --> 00:47:26,239
Speaker 1: of the Holy Pike to bloodline, Kim Jong un was

902
00:47:26,280 --> 00:47:28,680
Speaker 1: not born to be the inheritor of the Kim regime.

903
00:47:29,160 --> 00:47:32,120
Speaker 1: Jong Un came into this world in nineteen eighty four,

904
00:47:32,239 --> 00:47:36,520
Speaker 1: appropriately enough. North Korean propagandists, however, later rewrote history to

905
00:47:36,520 --> 00:47:38,600
Speaker 1: claim that he had been born in nineteen eighty two,

906
00:47:38,640 --> 00:47:40,440
Speaker 1: so it would be in line with Kim Il sung's

907
00:47:40,440 --> 00:47:43,960
Speaker 1: real nineteen twelve birthday and Kim Jong ills falsified nineteen

908
00:47:43,960 --> 00:47:47,960
Speaker 1: forty two birth um. But that would come later because

909
00:47:48,080 --> 00:47:51,440
Speaker 1: North Korea's current supreme ruler was born the son of

910
00:47:51,480 --> 00:47:54,360
Speaker 1: his father's mistress, not the son of his father's official

911
00:47:54,440 --> 00:47:57,400
Speaker 1: wife uh. And in fact, Kim Il sung did not

912
00:47:57,600 --> 00:48:00,799
Speaker 1: know that Kim jong un existed for first several years

913
00:48:00,800 --> 00:48:03,520
Speaker 1: of his life because Kim Jong Ill kept his mistresses

914
00:48:03,560 --> 00:48:06,600
Speaker 1: hidden from his dad and also his first kids. Now,

915
00:48:06,719 --> 00:48:09,120
Speaker 1: Kim jong Un was his father's third son. His first

916
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:11,839
Speaker 1: son Kim jong Nam, who is the guy who got

917
00:48:11,840 --> 00:48:15,280
Speaker 1: assassinated in that airport by those women who like rubbed

918
00:48:15,320 --> 00:48:18,640
Speaker 1: him with poison. More recently, like, he was also the

919
00:48:18,680 --> 00:48:21,560
Speaker 1: son of one of Kim Jong Il's mistresses. Now, Kim

920
00:48:21,640 --> 00:48:24,680
Speaker 1: Jong Il never married Kim jong Nam's mom or Kim

921
00:48:24,760 --> 00:48:26,840
Speaker 1: Jong UN's mother, but he did force them to like

922
00:48:27,000 --> 00:48:30,560
Speaker 1: divorce their other partners and move in to isolated mansions

923
00:48:30,560 --> 00:48:33,240
Speaker 1: in Pyongyang. Can I just say this truly is now

924
00:48:33,280 --> 00:48:37,399
Speaker 1: behind the bastard. Yeah yeah, yeah, We're we're very very

925
00:48:37,440 --> 00:48:40,520
Speaker 1: behind him. Still at this point, pun It truly lived

926
00:48:40,560 --> 00:48:45,319
Speaker 1: up to the name. So Kim's second two sons were

927
00:48:45,360 --> 00:48:48,560
Speaker 1: with a dancer k Yong Hui. Jong Il moved them

928
00:48:48,560 --> 00:48:52,080
Speaker 1: into a compound in Pyongyang separate from his other family members.

929
00:48:52,160 --> 00:48:54,799
Speaker 1: So he has like a couple of different mistresses and

930
00:48:54,920 --> 00:48:57,480
Speaker 1: kids with each of these mistresses, and he has them

931
00:48:57,480 --> 00:49:01,240
Speaker 1: all in separate walled compounds that are all around his mansion,

932
00:49:01,600 --> 00:49:04,360
Speaker 1: which is walled off from the outside world, but also

933
00:49:04,400 --> 00:49:06,600
Speaker 1: walled off from all of his mistresses and all of

934
00:49:06,640 --> 00:49:09,600
Speaker 1: his kids homes. UM. And these are they just been

935
00:49:09,680 --> 00:49:12,880
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of dollars buying these giant facilities which

936
00:49:12,880 --> 00:49:17,640
Speaker 1: exist to protect both Kim Jong Il and his his

937
00:49:18,000 --> 00:49:21,360
Speaker 1: lovers and kids from their people, but also to protect

938
00:49:21,520 --> 00:49:25,800
Speaker 1: Kim from his mistresses and his children UM and allow

939
00:49:25,920 --> 00:49:28,080
Speaker 1: him to like lock them away in their separate little

940
00:49:28,160 --> 00:49:30,919
Speaker 1: chunks of the compound if he wants, and they grow

941
00:49:31,000 --> 00:49:34,759
Speaker 1: up very very very isolated UM. At best. They were

942
00:49:34,800 --> 00:49:37,719
Speaker 1: allowed to play with their cousins occasionally, but usually they

943
00:49:37,719 --> 00:49:41,160
Speaker 1: were kept alone. His oldest son, Jong Nam, was kept

944
00:49:41,200 --> 00:49:45,120
Speaker 1: separate from Uh Kim Uh jong un and from his

945
00:49:45,600 --> 00:49:49,080
Speaker 1: other brother, so like the brothers don't spend much time together,

946
00:49:49,160 --> 00:49:53,920
Speaker 1: they don't have friends UM. Inside their lonely compounds, the

947
00:49:54,280 --> 00:49:58,040
Speaker 1: separated jong Ill children lived lives of isolated splendor. They

948
00:49:58,080 --> 00:50:01,680
Speaker 1: had fifteen footgates on beach friend compounds with amusement park

949
00:50:01,800 --> 00:50:04,880
Speaker 1: rides built into them, the latest televisions in video games,

950
00:50:05,080 --> 00:50:09,280
Speaker 1: pinball machines, dirt bikes, dune buggies, jet skis. Whole buildings

951
00:50:09,280 --> 00:50:11,319
Speaker 1: were filled with toys for the boys and girls just

952
00:50:11,440 --> 00:50:14,239
Speaker 1: up to the rafters with legos and stuff. Um. The

953
00:50:14,320 --> 00:50:16,960
Speaker 1: latest of of anything coming out of the West was available.

954
00:50:17,040 --> 00:50:21,399
Speaker 1: They had toy guns that like fired realistic bullets made

955
00:50:21,400 --> 00:50:24,240
Speaker 1: specifically for them. They also had plenty of real guns

956
00:50:24,719 --> 00:50:28,160
Speaker 1: like any self respecting dictator's son. Kim Jong un was

957
00:50:28,239 --> 00:50:32,879
Speaker 1: given forty five caliber handgun when he was eleven years old.

958
00:50:32,960 --> 00:50:35,480
Speaker 1: He was given a specially modified car that he could

959
00:50:35,560 --> 00:50:37,799
Speaker 1: drive and see above the steering wheel in when he

960
00:50:37,880 --> 00:50:42,920
Speaker 1: was seven years old. Yeah, he's he he grows up

961
00:50:42,960 --> 00:50:45,799
Speaker 1: like Richie rich um, but he's not allowed to have

962
00:50:45,880 --> 00:50:49,560
Speaker 1: friends like that's that's uh. Like his closest friend as

963
00:50:49,600 --> 00:50:51,840
Speaker 1: a child, as far as we know, was a middle

964
00:50:51,880 --> 00:50:58,640
Speaker 1: aged Japanese sushi chef named Fujimoto Um and Fujimoto is

965
00:50:58,640 --> 00:51:01,239
Speaker 1: an interesting dude. He lives Japan now, and his like

966
00:51:01,320 --> 00:51:04,040
Speaker 1: business cards essentially say like ask me if you have

967
00:51:04,120 --> 00:51:06,200
Speaker 1: questions about the Kim family because he got hired to

968
00:51:06,200 --> 00:51:09,160
Speaker 1: work for them in the eighties and nineties and was

969
00:51:09,239 --> 00:51:11,719
Speaker 1: like his story about it, and he does have a

970
00:51:11,719 --> 00:51:14,040
Speaker 1: lot of pictures with Kim Jong lun and definitely was around.

971
00:51:14,200 --> 00:51:17,080
Speaker 1: Is that Kim Jong ill at a certain point asked

972
00:51:17,120 --> 00:51:19,879
Speaker 1: him to be his son's playmate, since there were never

973
00:51:19,920 --> 00:51:23,160
Speaker 1: any real kids around, and so Kim jong Lun would

974
00:51:23,160 --> 00:51:28,400
Speaker 1: listen to Fujimoto's Whitney Houston records uh and like augle

975
00:51:28,520 --> 00:51:31,960
Speaker 1: his air Jordan's sneakers and stuff, and uh you know

976
00:51:32,040 --> 00:51:35,600
Speaker 1: they would uh the like that was his The closest

977
00:51:35,640 --> 00:51:37,520
Speaker 1: thing he had to a real friend was this like

978
00:51:38,080 --> 00:51:41,200
Speaker 1: kind of weird Japanese dude who took a job in

979
00:51:41,280 --> 00:51:44,360
Speaker 1: North Korea because it sounded different, um, and was willing

980
00:51:44,400 --> 00:51:47,440
Speaker 1: to like spend fifteen years cooking sushi for a dictator.

981
00:51:47,960 --> 00:51:50,720
Speaker 1: That's his like best buddy growing up. Yeah, and also

982
00:51:50,760 --> 00:51:54,040
Speaker 1: being his like entry to pop culture, yes, and also

983
00:51:54,120 --> 00:51:58,040
Speaker 1: being his entry to Western culture. Um. So he he

984
00:51:58,120 --> 00:52:01,319
Speaker 1: seems like an interesting guy. Um. In interviews with and

985
00:52:01,480 --> 00:52:04,440
Speaker 1: A Fifield, Fujimoto recalled a moment at around age ten

986
00:52:04,520 --> 00:52:06,640
Speaker 1: when Kim jong un got angry at his aunt for

987
00:52:06,719 --> 00:52:09,919
Speaker 1: calling him little brother. Jong Un yelled at her, don't

988
00:52:09,920 --> 00:52:13,160
Speaker 1: treat me like a child. Fujimoto then suggested he'd go

989
00:52:13,200 --> 00:52:17,200
Speaker 1: by the nickname Comrade General instead of little brother, which stuck.

990
00:52:17,800 --> 00:52:20,879
Speaker 1: Everyone started calling him Comrade General after that. So I'm

991
00:52:20,920 --> 00:52:25,959
Speaker 1: like his grandfather, Fujimoto said, so I love the name. Hey,

992
00:52:26,000 --> 00:52:30,000
Speaker 1: Captain major, what is that? That is ridiculous? Comrade General. Well,

993
00:52:30,480 --> 00:52:32,520
Speaker 1: this is complicated by the fact that he actually is

994
00:52:32,520 --> 00:52:35,440
Speaker 1: appointed a general as a small child, uh and has

995
00:52:35,480 --> 00:52:38,040
Speaker 1: a uniform with general stars on it. And you know

996
00:52:38,040 --> 00:52:39,759
Speaker 1: when he's walking around with a gun, he's doing it

997
00:52:39,800 --> 00:52:43,399
Speaker 1: in a military uniform. Um, because that's just the way

998
00:52:43,400 --> 00:52:46,320
Speaker 1: it works in a dictatorship. Yeah, that's not even an implication,

999
00:52:46,400 --> 00:52:49,319
Speaker 1: it's an actual thing. That's amazing. Yeah, it's it's it's

1000
00:52:49,320 --> 00:52:52,480
Speaker 1: pretty great. So Kim John LUN's birthday parties tended to

1001
00:52:52,520 --> 00:52:55,200
Speaker 1: take place at the Kim family compound in one Soon,

1002
00:52:55,320 --> 00:52:58,320
Speaker 1: which is essentially North Korea's answer to Hawaii. Uh. No,

1003
00:52:58,520 --> 00:53:01,360
Speaker 1: children were invited to his parts, and instead the aging

1004
00:53:01,440 --> 00:53:05,080
Speaker 1: leadership cast of North Korea showed up to celebrate with

1005
00:53:05,160 --> 00:53:07,319
Speaker 1: an eight year old boy, which had to have been

1006
00:53:08,000 --> 00:53:12,239
Speaker 1: super fun. Uh. I'm gonna guess he didn't have a

1007
00:53:12,239 --> 00:53:15,560
Speaker 1: lot of competition. If they played Golden Eye, um probably

1008
00:53:16,000 --> 00:53:18,600
Speaker 1: probably fucking kick kick their ass as his odd job.

1009
00:53:18,640 --> 00:53:21,719
Speaker 1: I wonder if I wonder if the other if he

1010
00:53:21,760 --> 00:53:23,560
Speaker 1: played anyone, if they were allowed to win or if

1011
00:53:23,560 --> 00:53:26,479
Speaker 1: they had to lose. Yeah, I feel like if you pick,

1012
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:29,759
Speaker 1: like especially if you pick odd job playing Golden Eye

1013
00:53:29,840 --> 00:53:32,480
Speaker 1: with Kim jong Un and start like karate chopping him

1014
00:53:32,520 --> 00:53:35,880
Speaker 1: to death, Like, you don't last much longer after that, Like, yeah,

1015
00:53:35,960 --> 00:53:39,359
Speaker 1: that's not a good good plan for you. Uh so.

1016
00:53:39,440 --> 00:53:42,160
Speaker 1: Kim jong Un was known as a child for loving machinery.

1017
00:53:42,280 --> 00:53:45,560
Speaker 1: He was particularly fascinated with model planes. According to The

1018
00:53:45,560 --> 00:53:47,719
Speaker 1: Great Successor, even when he was eight or nine and

1019
00:53:47,760 --> 00:53:49,840
Speaker 1: still in pyong Yang, Kim jong un would stay up

1020
00:53:49,840 --> 00:53:52,840
Speaker 1: all night doing experiments with his machinery and insisting on

1021
00:53:52,920 --> 00:53:54,839
Speaker 1: speaking to some expert or another, even in the wee

1022
00:53:54,920 --> 00:53:56,799
Speaker 1: hours of the morning. If he couldn't figure things out

1023
00:53:56,840 --> 00:53:59,400
Speaker 1: by himself, when he had questions or when something didn't

1024
00:53:59,400 --> 00:54:01,680
Speaker 1: function well, he would call for a nautical engineer to

1025
00:54:01,719 --> 00:54:03,520
Speaker 1: come and explain it to him, no matter how late

1026
00:54:03,560 --> 00:54:08,200
Speaker 1: it was. His aunt told me, so, he's like in

1027
00:54:08,239 --> 00:54:13,160
Speaker 1: some ways, like that sounds like it could. Uh you

1028
00:54:13,200 --> 00:54:15,839
Speaker 1: could expect someone to grow up with a lot of

1029
00:54:15,880 --> 00:54:19,000
Speaker 1: talents doing that, Like if you actually have an interest

1030
00:54:19,000 --> 00:54:21,359
Speaker 1: in engineering and you could just force engineers to wake

1031
00:54:21,440 --> 00:54:23,239
Speaker 1: up in the middle of the night and explain things

1032
00:54:23,280 --> 00:54:25,680
Speaker 1: to you, Like sure, I mean, let's see that. Yeah,

1033
00:54:25,719 --> 00:54:29,120
Speaker 1: any any like and that's here's the thing for kids

1034
00:54:29,160 --> 00:54:31,200
Speaker 1: that's not that uncommon either whether you're good at it

1035
00:54:31,280 --> 00:54:34,280
Speaker 1: or not or what what what your fascination is with them?

1036
00:54:34,320 --> 00:54:37,799
Speaker 1: So I wonder it's it's probably one of the only things.

1037
00:54:37,800 --> 00:54:39,560
Speaker 1: Like let's say you were talking about earlier, how like

1038
00:54:39,600 --> 00:54:41,600
Speaker 1: ten years from now, how much of this might still track?

1039
00:54:42,040 --> 00:54:45,000
Speaker 1: That part probably still does. It sounds like an innocuous

1040
00:54:45,000 --> 00:54:49,160
Speaker 1: but enough thing in regards to what someone that age

1041
00:54:49,160 --> 00:54:52,520
Speaker 1: would be into, as opposed to wearing a general's uniform,

1042
00:54:52,800 --> 00:54:57,919
Speaker 1: which also obviously really happened. Uh, and holding guns. I mean,

1043
00:54:58,080 --> 00:55:00,400
Speaker 1: if you when I was seven years old or eleven

1044
00:55:00,440 --> 00:55:02,799
Speaker 1: years old, you'd given me a forty five and and

1045
00:55:02,920 --> 00:55:06,000
Speaker 1: made me a general, I would have I would have

1046
00:55:06,040 --> 00:55:08,000
Speaker 1: probably invaded a couple of countries and it would have

1047
00:55:08,000 --> 00:55:11,400
Speaker 1: gone really badly. Uh yeah, yeah, So I guess we

1048
00:55:11,480 --> 00:55:14,160
Speaker 1: gotta give the kid credit for some some restraint there,

1049
00:55:14,239 --> 00:55:19,440
Speaker 1: or at least his dad. Now. Uh. Basketball is huge

1050
00:55:19,760 --> 00:55:22,800
Speaker 1: in Korea, in both Korea's both South and North Korea,

1051
00:55:23,000 --> 00:55:26,320
Speaker 1: big fucking basketball fans, and it's something of a trope

1052
00:55:26,320 --> 00:55:28,920
Speaker 1: in Korean culture for mothers to tell their children to

1053
00:55:28,960 --> 00:55:31,480
Speaker 1: play basketball so they will grow up taller. That's a

1054
00:55:31,480 --> 00:55:34,719
Speaker 1: common myth. Uh. So Kim jong ill was just like

1055
00:55:34,800 --> 00:55:38,040
Speaker 1: five ft two, very very short dude. Uh, Kim jong

1056
00:55:38,160 --> 00:55:40,759
Speaker 1: un grew up to be like five ft seven. Um.

1057
00:55:40,800 --> 00:55:44,120
Speaker 1: So you know, you could argue that maybe maybe all

1058
00:55:44,120 --> 00:55:46,080
Speaker 1: the basketball he played as a kid helped him, in

1059
00:55:46,080 --> 00:55:49,760
Speaker 1: fact grow up a little bit taller. Um, It's it's definite.

1060
00:55:49,840 --> 00:55:51,279
Speaker 1: One of the things we know to a point of

1061
00:55:51,320 --> 00:55:54,520
Speaker 1: certainty about Kim jong un is that for basically all

1062
00:55:54,560 --> 00:55:59,160
Speaker 1: of his life he has been absolutely obsessed with basketball. Uh.

1063
00:55:59,400 --> 00:56:02,439
Speaker 1: Children of rich party opera chicks would be bust in

1064
00:56:02,480 --> 00:56:05,600
Speaker 1: to play games with him. Fujimoto observed he had the

1065
00:56:05,640 --> 00:56:08,239
Speaker 1: ability to make good judgments with solid reasoning. He knew

1066
00:56:08,239 --> 00:56:11,200
Speaker 1: when to praise and went to criticize. Fujimoto noted that

1067
00:56:11,200 --> 00:56:15,160
Speaker 1: he seemed to particularly enjoy critiquing players, especially due to

1068
00:56:15,200 --> 00:56:17,319
Speaker 1: the fear that's provoked in them. He learned from an

1069
00:56:17,320 --> 00:56:21,440
Speaker 1: early age to enjoy exercising power over people. One story

1070
00:56:21,520 --> 00:56:23,879
Speaker 1: Fujimoto tells is of another time as of a time

1071
00:56:23,920 --> 00:56:25,760
Speaker 1: he took Kim jong un and one of his brothers

1072
00:56:25,760 --> 00:56:29,120
Speaker 1: out fishing for sea bass. Every time he Fujimoto would

1073
00:56:29,160 --> 00:56:31,759
Speaker 1: catch a bass. Pre team Kim jong un would grab

1074
00:56:31,800 --> 00:56:35,240
Speaker 1: the rod and shout, I caught it. So we're getting

1075
00:56:35,280 --> 00:56:38,319
Speaker 1: an idea for the kind of personality that develops um

1076
00:56:38,560 --> 00:56:40,680
Speaker 1: from a kid who grows up in this Yeah. Yeah,

1077
00:56:40,719 --> 00:56:45,480
Speaker 1: that's uh, that's uh. He got the dictatorship crash course

1078
00:56:45,480 --> 00:56:49,319
Speaker 1: early on. Yeah, yeah, he grows up very comfortable with

1079
00:56:49,400 --> 00:56:54,600
Speaker 1: acting that way. On July, Kim Ill soong's heart finally

1080
00:56:54,640 --> 00:56:57,719
Speaker 1: gave out after decades of hard living and a harder dictating.

1081
00:56:58,160 --> 00:57:00,720
Speaker 1: Kim Jong un was ten years old and still technically

1082
00:57:00,719 --> 00:57:02,839
Speaker 1: a secret to the people of North Korea at the time.

1083
00:57:03,160 --> 00:57:05,600
Speaker 1: They were certainly aware of his father, Kim Jong ill, though,

1084
00:57:05,640 --> 00:57:08,040
Speaker 1: because he had been the promise successor for many years.

1085
00:57:08,520 --> 00:57:10,600
Speaker 1: Kim Il sung was hailed by the Korean Central News

1086
00:57:10,600 --> 00:57:12,520
Speaker 1: Agency as a man who had turned North Korea from

1087
00:57:12,520 --> 00:57:15,400
Speaker 1: a land where age old backwardness and poverty had prevailed

1088
00:57:15,440 --> 00:57:19,760
Speaker 1: into a powerful socialist country, independent, self supporting, and self reliance.

1089
00:57:20,720 --> 00:57:22,920
Speaker 1: The rest of the nineteen nineties increasingly put the lie

1090
00:57:23,000 --> 00:57:25,520
Speaker 1: to this claim, as North Korea's terrible famine hit its

1091
00:57:25,520 --> 00:57:29,160
Speaker 1: height not long after Kim Jong il took power. Now,

1092
00:57:29,400 --> 00:57:32,960
Speaker 1: I can remember when this like in the early two thousands,

1093
00:57:33,000 --> 00:57:34,840
Speaker 1: when I was just starting off in my career writing

1094
00:57:34,840 --> 00:57:37,240
Speaker 1: for Cracked that we had a number of popular articles

1095
00:57:37,320 --> 00:57:40,960
Speaker 1: run that referenced all the crazy claims about Kim Jong Ill.

1096
00:57:41,440 --> 00:57:43,360
Speaker 1: And there was a period of years there, especially in

1097
00:57:43,400 --> 00:57:45,680
Speaker 1: the early two thousands, where he was the Western world's

1098
00:57:45,720 --> 00:57:49,240
Speaker 1: like favorite punching bag. UM. Team America World Police is

1099
00:57:49,280 --> 00:57:52,080
Speaker 1: probably like the clearest example. Yeah, that's the biggest example

1100
00:57:52,120 --> 00:57:55,000
Speaker 1: of this. Um. And there were a lot of really

1101
00:57:55,120 --> 00:57:58,440
Speaker 1: crazy lies told about Kim Jong Ill, especially as the

1102
00:57:58,480 --> 00:58:01,800
Speaker 1: famine subsides in the early two thousands and things start

1103
00:58:01,840 --> 00:58:04,920
Speaker 1: to recover. Um, and there's you know, you hear stories

1104
00:58:05,000 --> 00:58:08,560
Speaker 1: about uh he he wrote perfect operas, He'd play a

1105
00:58:08,600 --> 00:58:11,000
Speaker 1: single perfect game of golf and then quit the game forever.

1106
00:58:11,440 --> 00:58:14,120
Speaker 1: There was propaganda that said he was a world fashion icon,

1107
00:58:14,240 --> 00:58:17,160
Speaker 1: that said he'd invented the hamburger, that said he'd never

1108
00:58:17,280 --> 00:58:19,120
Speaker 1: used a toilet, and of course that would claim he

1109
00:58:19,120 --> 00:58:22,520
Speaker 1: could control the weather. Um. These colorful tales made North

1110
00:58:22,600 --> 00:58:25,480
Speaker 1: Korea's dictator fun to write about, but the lies came

1111
00:58:25,520 --> 00:58:27,720
Speaker 1: from a place of desperation. Things were bad in North

1112
00:58:27,800 --> 00:58:29,840
Speaker 1: Korea for most of this period, and the regular people

1113
00:58:29,920 --> 00:58:32,800
Speaker 1: knew it. Kim Jong iills insane propaganda was the result

1114
00:58:32,800 --> 00:58:35,400
Speaker 1: of a desperate regime with very little to really brag about.

1115
00:58:35,960 --> 00:58:38,760
Speaker 1: His father's difficult early years were mostly lost on Kim

1116
00:58:38,840 --> 00:58:41,320
Speaker 1: Jong un because during this period of time, he continued

1117
00:58:41,360 --> 00:58:44,960
Speaker 1: to live in armed compounds, eating sushi prepared by a

1118
00:58:45,000 --> 00:58:48,480
Speaker 1: private chef, flying to Paris to see euro Disney. Uh

1119
00:58:48,480 --> 00:58:51,080
Speaker 1: And while his citizens were eating grass and pages from

1120
00:58:51,120 --> 00:58:53,560
Speaker 1: books to quell their hunger pains, the air Apparent got

1121
00:58:53,640 --> 00:58:56,160
Speaker 1: to enjoy the finest buffets Europe had to offer. He

1122
00:58:56,200 --> 00:58:59,200
Speaker 1: played in rooms full of legos in his private palace. Uh.

1123
00:58:59,240 --> 00:59:01,919
Speaker 1: He and the other him ain't only a special rice

1124
00:59:02,000 --> 00:59:05,640
Speaker 1: produced for them in dedicated farms. Female harvesters would select

1125
00:59:05,640 --> 00:59:07,920
Speaker 1: each grain by hand, making sure they were all perfect

1126
00:59:07,920 --> 00:59:13,040
Speaker 1: and the same size. So this is his his childhood

1127
00:59:13,040 --> 00:59:15,680
Speaker 1: while starvation is going on. It's really important to keep

1128
00:59:15,680 --> 00:59:18,880
Speaker 1: that in mind, of course. Yeah, And I think people, UM,

1129
00:59:19,000 --> 00:59:22,000
Speaker 1: I don't know why this can still be a mystery

1130
00:59:22,000 --> 00:59:24,120
Speaker 1: to some people, but like you know, people look back

1131
00:59:24,160 --> 00:59:26,040
Speaker 1: on certain things like how could people let this happen?

1132
00:59:26,080 --> 00:59:29,360
Speaker 1: Or how could people sit idly by? And um, all

1133
00:59:29,400 --> 00:59:31,920
Speaker 1: you have to do is look around now, um to

1134
00:59:32,280 --> 00:59:35,600
Speaker 1: a lot of what has happened since Trump's been in office,

1135
00:59:35,760 --> 00:59:38,439
Speaker 1: which is that like you know, all of the it's

1136
00:59:38,560 --> 00:59:41,280
Speaker 1: it's very easy for it to happen, and uh, and

1137
00:59:41,320 --> 00:59:44,920
Speaker 1: it's very hard for people to there's overthrowing that in

1138
00:59:44,960 --> 00:59:48,760
Speaker 1: any capacity. That's I guess what I'm getting at more

1139
00:59:48,880 --> 00:59:51,840
Speaker 1: is the parts of the propaganda that are like, you know,

1140
00:59:51,880 --> 00:59:53,600
Speaker 1: this guy never had to go to the bathroom and

1141
00:59:53,680 --> 00:59:57,480
Speaker 1: he invented the hamburger. Um, you know, I'm of course

1142
00:59:57,640 --> 01:00:00,480
Speaker 1: most people didn't believe it. But also it's not gonna

1143
01:00:00,640 --> 01:00:03,320
Speaker 1: change anything in the sense that people aren't gonna suddenly

1144
01:00:03,320 --> 01:00:06,320
Speaker 1: be like that's a crock of ship. Let's uh, we

1145
01:00:06,360 --> 01:00:09,439
Speaker 1: need someone else here, you know, I mean, yeah, yeah,

1146
01:00:09,480 --> 01:00:12,000
Speaker 1: there's just there's just not room for that, um in

1147
01:00:12,040 --> 01:00:14,240
Speaker 1: this society. And part of it's just because like the

1148
01:00:14,280 --> 01:00:17,240
Speaker 1: media is so controlled that like even if people aren't

1149
01:00:17,280 --> 01:00:20,560
Speaker 1: buying all the propaganda, there's no room for anything else

1150
01:00:20,600 --> 01:00:23,040
Speaker 1: to enter into like public media. And if if you

1151
01:00:23,080 --> 01:00:26,880
Speaker 1: push it enough times, just the repetition of it, people

1152
01:00:26,920 --> 01:00:29,320
Speaker 1: are gonna be are gonna wear down to it in

1153
01:00:29,360 --> 01:00:32,439
Speaker 1: any Yeah. Right, we'll talk a little bit more about

1154
01:00:32,480 --> 01:00:37,200
Speaker 1: that later too. Um So Kim Jong Il's infamous propaganda

1155
01:00:37,240 --> 01:00:39,880
Speaker 1: campaigns where yeah, more of a holding strategy than anything else,

1156
01:00:39,880 --> 01:00:44,200
Speaker 1: while he shifted his nation to a military first domestic policy. Uh.

1157
01:00:44,240 --> 01:00:46,320
Speaker 1: Some people might consider it odd to focus your money

1158
01:00:46,320 --> 01:00:49,120
Speaker 1: and attention on more soldiers and gaining nuclear missiles while

1159
01:00:49,160 --> 01:00:51,560
Speaker 1: people are eating each other, but Kim jong Ill knew

1160
01:00:51,600 --> 01:00:53,880
Speaker 1: what he was doing in the military kept him in power.

1161
01:00:54,360 --> 01:00:57,120
Speaker 1: As the nineteen nineties rolled along, Kim jong nam, jong

1162
01:00:57,240 --> 01:01:00,560
Speaker 1: UN's older half brother, grew increasingly a strange his father

1163
01:01:00,640 --> 01:01:03,080
Speaker 1: and from the lovers of power in North Korea. He

1164
01:01:03,120 --> 01:01:05,080
Speaker 1: was disgraced when he and his mother were caught with

1165
01:01:05,120 --> 01:01:07,720
Speaker 1: fake passports trying to enter Japan in order to see

1166
01:01:07,920 --> 01:01:11,880
Speaker 1: Tokyo Disneyland. The fake name he traveled under, Pong Jong,

1167
01:01:12,120 --> 01:01:14,800
Speaker 1: translated to fat bear, a fact which made him a

1168
01:01:14,880 --> 01:01:19,160
Speaker 1: laughing stock of world media. Yeah, very funny. Kim jong

1169
01:01:19,240 --> 01:01:21,520
Speaker 1: Nam's fading star also came from the fact that his

1170
01:01:21,560 --> 01:01:23,600
Speaker 1: mother spent most of her time in Russia rather than

1171
01:01:23,640 --> 01:01:26,320
Speaker 1: sucking up to Kim Jong Il. According to The Great Successor,

1172
01:01:26,640 --> 01:01:29,240
Speaker 1: Kim Jong UN's mother, on the other hand, became a

1173
01:01:29,240 --> 01:01:32,280
Speaker 1: constant presence in Kim jong Il's life as his favorite consort.

1174
01:01:32,360 --> 01:01:34,440
Speaker 1: She planted the seeds of change from behind the scenes.

1175
01:01:34,640 --> 01:01:36,720
Speaker 1: Her influence came to be seen everywhere, such as in

1176
01:01:36,760 --> 01:01:39,200
Speaker 1: the way Donald Duck and Tom and Jerry cartoons suddenly

1177
01:01:39,200 --> 01:01:42,000
Speaker 1: appeared on television dubbed into Korean right around the time

1178
01:01:42,000 --> 01:01:44,360
Speaker 1: her children would have been watching them. Around the same time,

1179
01:01:44,440 --> 01:01:46,080
Speaker 1: Kim jong il had flown into a rage when he

1180
01:01:46,120 --> 01:01:48,640
Speaker 1: discovered that Kim jong Nam, who was then about twenty,

1181
01:01:48,720 --> 01:01:51,120
Speaker 1: had been going out and drinking in pyeong Yang for

1182
01:01:51,200 --> 01:01:53,840
Speaker 1: disobeying his orders. Kim Jong Ill put Kim jong Nam's

1183
01:01:53,840 --> 01:01:56,680
Speaker 1: household under arrest for a month, cutting off their food

1184
01:01:56,680 --> 01:02:00,600
Speaker 1: supplies and making them clean up after themselves. Um so

1185
01:02:00,640 --> 01:02:02,560
Speaker 1: that's that's the kind of punishment you get as the

1186
01:02:02,560 --> 01:02:05,880
Speaker 1: son of a dictator. You got to clean your own house. Yeah.

1187
01:02:05,920 --> 01:02:10,680
Speaker 1: The humanity, where is it? Yeah? Now. Kim jong un

1188
01:02:10,800 --> 01:02:14,120
Speaker 1: famously spent most of his adolescence in burned Switzerland. To

1189
01:02:14,160 --> 01:02:16,640
Speaker 1: be specific, he and his older brother Kim Jong Chol

1190
01:02:17,120 --> 01:02:19,320
Speaker 1: his other older brother, lived in the suburb of lead

1191
01:02:19,440 --> 01:02:22,439
Speaker 1: Field with their maternal aunt and uncle. They lived under

1192
01:02:22,440 --> 01:02:25,440
Speaker 1: assumed names, and no one but high ranking Swiss security

1193
01:02:25,480 --> 01:02:28,520
Speaker 1: services realized who they truly were. To their credit, the

1194
01:02:28,560 --> 01:02:31,920
Speaker 1: Swiss intelligence agencies like knew that the children of like

1195
01:02:32,040 --> 01:02:34,800
Speaker 1: North Korea's dictator were there, but had a policy of

1196
01:02:34,840 --> 01:02:37,480
Speaker 1: not really keeping tabs on them because they were kids

1197
01:02:37,560 --> 01:02:41,280
Speaker 1: and they felt like they deserve a chance to be children. Um,

1198
01:02:41,280 --> 01:02:47,360
Speaker 1: which I think is admirable. Um yeah. Now, uh, For

1199
01:02:47,400 --> 01:02:49,960
Speaker 1: the most part, it seems like Kim Jong un and

1200
01:02:50,080 --> 01:02:52,880
Speaker 1: his older brother were allowed to live the closest approximation

1201
01:02:52,880 --> 01:02:55,280
Speaker 1: of a normal life possible for the children of dictators,

1202
01:02:55,320 --> 01:02:57,560
Speaker 1: at least during the times when they were in Switzerland.

1203
01:02:57,960 --> 01:03:01,240
Speaker 1: Years later, Kim Jong UN's aunt, a Young suck recalled,

1204
01:03:01,480 --> 01:03:03,160
Speaker 1: we lived in a normal home and acted like a

1205
01:03:03,200 --> 01:03:05,640
Speaker 1: normal family. I acted like their mother. Their friends would

1206
01:03:05,640 --> 01:03:07,440
Speaker 1: come over and I would make them snacks. It was

1207
01:03:07,440 --> 01:03:10,200
Speaker 1: a very normal childhood with birthday parties and gifts and

1208
01:03:10,240 --> 01:03:14,960
Speaker 1: Swiss kids coming over to play. So that's that's yeah, yeah,

1209
01:03:15,040 --> 01:03:18,840
Speaker 1: there there was a brief period where like he almost

1210
01:03:18,920 --> 01:03:21,600
Speaker 1: had a normal middle class upbringing, like you see, you

1211
01:03:21,720 --> 01:03:24,880
Speaker 1: see like glimmers of that in in this kid's life,

1212
01:03:24,920 --> 01:03:28,000
Speaker 1: like they and it's hard to tell whether it was

1213
01:03:28,080 --> 01:03:31,640
Speaker 1: like pushed upon him or that's what they were striving for,

1214
01:03:32,320 --> 01:03:34,880
Speaker 1: you know what, items he's like they were striving for

1215
01:03:34,960 --> 01:03:37,400
Speaker 1: him to get a good education because his mom would

1216
01:03:37,440 --> 01:03:40,600
Speaker 1: regularly visit and like chastise him for not getting better grades.

1217
01:03:40,640 --> 01:03:42,000
Speaker 1: And they just knew that he wasn't going to be

1218
01:03:42,040 --> 01:03:45,200
Speaker 1: able to get a good enough education um in North

1219
01:03:45,280 --> 01:03:48,200
Speaker 1: Korea because like, for one thing, Um, it's kind of

1220
01:03:48,200 --> 01:03:50,240
Speaker 1: hard to get a good education when the teachers are

1221
01:03:50,280 --> 01:03:54,440
Speaker 1: afraid you might have them shipped to Goo logs. Yeah. Yeah,

1222
01:03:54,600 --> 01:03:57,720
Speaker 1: so Kim john Un maintained his love of model airplanes

1223
01:03:57,760 --> 01:03:59,480
Speaker 1: while he lived in Switzerland. He went out with his

1224
01:03:59,520 --> 01:04:01,840
Speaker 1: aunt and unk on vacations to the French riviera and

1225
01:04:01,840 --> 01:04:04,920
Speaker 1: to euro Disney. Like every child of the nineteen nineties,

1226
01:04:04,920 --> 01:04:07,520
Speaker 1: he and his yeah yeah, he and his older brother

1227
01:04:07,600 --> 01:04:10,400
Speaker 1: developed an intense and abiding love for the action films

1228
01:04:10,440 --> 01:04:15,760
Speaker 1: of Gean Claude van Damn, which you know, of course. Yeah.

1229
01:04:16,000 --> 01:04:19,640
Speaker 1: What I'm very curious about because the nineties in particular,

1230
01:04:20,440 --> 01:04:26,040
Speaker 1: specifically for movies is about when it became I guess

1231
01:04:26,040 --> 01:04:28,520
Speaker 1: when even like indie films kind of had an assembly

1232
01:04:28,560 --> 01:04:31,880
Speaker 1: line model almost you know what I mean. Yeah, yeah,

1233
01:04:31,880 --> 01:04:33,920
Speaker 1: And it's one of the things that that's interesting to

1234
01:04:33,960 --> 01:04:36,120
Speaker 1: me here is that, uh yeah. He was also a

1235
01:04:36,200 --> 01:04:39,440
Speaker 1: huge fan of Michael Jackson. Um, Like he really seems

1236
01:04:39,480 --> 01:04:43,680
Speaker 1: to be like a pretty normal, Like I think most

1237
01:04:43,720 --> 01:04:45,680
Speaker 1: of the people listening who grew up in the nineties

1238
01:04:45,760 --> 01:04:48,800
Speaker 1: could have had long and engaged conversations with Kim John

1239
01:04:48,960 --> 01:04:51,800
Speaker 1: and his kids about like you know the Street Fighter

1240
01:04:51,840 --> 01:04:54,520
Speaker 1: movie or oh yeah, I can't. I I saw every

1241
01:04:54,520 --> 01:04:59,120
Speaker 1: single Sudden Impact, Lion, Hard, Universal Soldier, Hard Target. Those

1242
01:04:59,120 --> 01:05:01,280
Speaker 1: are all his bigger and these movies right there, and

1243
01:05:01,600 --> 01:05:04,840
Speaker 1: Kim Jong UN's older brother, Kim Jong Chol even included

1244
01:05:04,920 --> 01:05:07,400
Speaker 1: John Claude van Damon an essay he wrote at school,

1245
01:05:07,640 --> 01:05:09,919
Speaker 1: and we have a quote from it. If I had

1246
01:05:09,960 --> 01:05:12,600
Speaker 1: my ideal world, I would not allow weapons and Adam

1247
01:05:12,640 --> 01:05:15,800
Speaker 1: bombs anymore. I would destroy all terrorists with the Hollywood

1248
01:05:15,800 --> 01:05:18,520
Speaker 1: star Jean Claude van dam everybody would be happy. No

1249
01:05:18,600 --> 01:05:22,800
Speaker 1: more war, no more dying, no more crying. So that's

1250
01:05:22,880 --> 01:05:25,800
Speaker 1: a uplifting I wonder what they thought of the I

1251
01:05:25,800 --> 01:05:27,800
Speaker 1: don't know if you remember this when Universal Soldier came

1252
01:05:27,840 --> 01:05:29,680
Speaker 1: out at the can Film Festive. I believe it was

1253
01:05:29,680 --> 01:05:32,600
Speaker 1: at the Can Film Festival, um John Claud van Damon

1254
01:05:32,720 --> 01:05:37,120
Speaker 1: Dolph Londron had a shoving match. I didn't know that,

1255
01:05:37,240 --> 01:05:39,280
Speaker 1: Yeah it was, it was. It turned out it was

1256
01:05:39,360 --> 01:05:43,000
Speaker 1: a publicity stunt for the movie but I picture them

1257
01:05:43,120 --> 01:05:46,040
Speaker 1: being like, oh man, he could have owned Dolph Londron.

1258
01:05:46,320 --> 01:05:48,920
Speaker 1: Oh man, he could have really uh, which is funny

1259
01:05:48,960 --> 01:05:50,880
Speaker 1: because Dolph Londron, I don't know if most people he

1260
01:05:50,920 --> 01:05:53,640
Speaker 1: has like a PhD. And I think like chemistry. Yeah,

1261
01:05:53,680 --> 01:06:01,640
Speaker 1: he's a genius and also a living mountain. Yes, yeah, yeah,

1262
01:06:01,720 --> 01:06:05,120
Speaker 1: Dolph Longern is a is a terrifying fellow. Um that's

1263
01:06:05,120 --> 01:06:07,800
Speaker 1: a sidebar, but yeah, I I just that's very fascinating

1264
01:06:07,840 --> 01:06:11,920
Speaker 1: because they those guys had a very specific um demographic

1265
01:06:11,960 --> 01:06:16,840
Speaker 1: they appealed to, and it was two people that were

1266
01:06:16,960 --> 01:06:21,160
Speaker 1: uh like these like boys of a certain eight. Yeah. Yeah,

1267
01:06:21,240 --> 01:06:24,360
Speaker 1: that that's like John Claude Van Damn is like the

1268
01:06:24,440 --> 01:06:27,560
Speaker 1: action figure that nobody grows up to be, but that

1269
01:06:27,720 --> 01:06:30,440
Speaker 1: like every kid wanted to be growing up in the nineties.

1270
01:06:31,120 --> 01:06:34,800
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, And I'm gonna guess that Kim Jong un

1271
01:06:35,200 --> 01:06:38,080
Speaker 1: from from Everything We Know probably felt the same way

1272
01:06:38,080 --> 01:06:42,480
Speaker 1: that you'll you did watching Universal Soldier. Um, yeah, we

1273
01:06:42,560 --> 01:06:46,760
Speaker 1: all we all like Art touches us all um. Eight

1274
01:06:46,800 --> 01:06:48,440
Speaker 1: years old, I think of that movie came out. I

1275
01:06:48,440 --> 01:06:50,600
Speaker 1: think I was around around eight years old, my seven

1276
01:06:50,720 --> 01:06:53,040
Speaker 1: and uh, I remember there was a cheap dollar theater

1277
01:06:53,080 --> 01:06:54,560
Speaker 1: and I went that's where I saw it. But I

1278
01:06:54,600 --> 01:06:58,640
Speaker 1: what you know, specifically at that age, you're going to think, like, yeah,

1279
01:06:58,680 --> 01:07:03,120
Speaker 1: guns don't get the job done. John Claud van Dam does. Yeah, yeah,

1280
01:07:03,120 --> 01:07:05,040
Speaker 1: what what are what are guns gonna do? We I've

1281
01:07:05,040 --> 01:07:07,880
Speaker 1: watched John Claud van Dam like spin kick thirty people

1282
01:07:07,880 --> 01:07:10,600
Speaker 1: with machine guns to death, Like, clearly the guns don't

1283
01:07:10,640 --> 01:07:15,720
Speaker 1: do the trick. Yeah, you gotta love that Foreign policy advice. Now,

1284
01:07:16,120 --> 01:07:19,040
Speaker 1: Kim Jong un was at best a mediocre student. His

1285
01:07:19,160 --> 01:07:22,040
Speaker 1: real mother visited regularly to press him to focus more

1286
01:07:22,080 --> 01:07:24,480
Speaker 1: in study harder, but being the heir to a dictatorship,

1287
01:07:24,520 --> 01:07:27,560
Speaker 1: there weren't really any punishments for bad behavior at school.

1288
01:07:27,960 --> 01:07:31,280
Speaker 1: Jong UN's teachers obviously could not meet with his parents. Instead,

1289
01:07:31,320 --> 01:07:33,680
Speaker 1: that role was played by a rotating cast of random

1290
01:07:33,680 --> 01:07:36,480
Speaker 1: North Koreans who worked in the country's diplomatic corps. The

1291
01:07:36,600 --> 01:07:39,200
Speaker 1: justification given was that the boy's real parents did not

1292
01:07:39,280 --> 01:07:42,080
Speaker 1: speak German. As a foreigner who did not speak the

1293
01:07:42,120 --> 01:07:44,840
Speaker 1: local language, Kim Jong un experienced middle school and high

1294
01:07:44,840 --> 01:07:47,280
Speaker 1: school as an outsider. For one thing, he wore nothing

1295
01:07:47,280 --> 01:07:50,240
Speaker 1: but track suits. Jeans were too American and forbidden for

1296
01:07:50,280 --> 01:07:53,000
Speaker 1: even him to wear. He was however, allowed to wear

1297
01:07:53,040 --> 01:07:56,000
Speaker 1: the latest Air Jordan's. Needless to say, he stood out

1298
01:07:56,080 --> 01:07:59,200
Speaker 1: visually as I think any kid wearing nothing but track

1299
01:07:59,280 --> 01:08:03,360
Speaker 1: suits and New Air Jordan's would have in middle school. Um,

1300
01:08:03,520 --> 01:08:06,439
Speaker 1: this is so fascinating because I wondered to this day

1301
01:08:06,480 --> 01:08:09,800
Speaker 1: if he because you know, the basketball obsession obviously is

1302
01:08:09,800 --> 01:08:12,439
Speaker 1: still on an ongoing thing, So I wonder if he's

1303
01:08:12,480 --> 01:08:14,720
Speaker 1: like a full on sneaker head, and if he has like,

1304
01:08:15,240 --> 01:08:18,200
Speaker 1: you know, a pair of whatever, like like the Travis

1305
01:08:18,200 --> 01:08:21,920
Speaker 1: Scott's New Jordan's shipped to him or like I'm I

1306
01:08:21,920 --> 01:08:25,320
Speaker 1: would be shocked if he doesn't right right exactly, And

1307
01:08:25,360 --> 01:08:28,400
Speaker 1: that blows my mind to no end, because you don't

1308
01:08:29,080 --> 01:08:31,200
Speaker 1: unless I'm missing something, I don't remember ever seeing him

1309
01:08:31,200 --> 01:08:33,680
Speaker 1: in popular media whenever he's you see him, pictures of

1310
01:08:33,720 --> 01:08:36,040
Speaker 1: him on the news or anything him wearing these things.

1311
01:08:36,040 --> 01:08:38,519
Speaker 1: But I bet when he's walking around the house, he

1312
01:08:38,760 --> 01:08:41,360
Speaker 1: is like looking at his closet and he's like, which

1313
01:08:41,400 --> 01:08:44,479
Speaker 1: pair of high top Jordan's am I gonna wear today? Yeah,

1314
01:08:44,520 --> 01:08:47,160
Speaker 1: he's got to have a shiploaded Jordan's. And I can't

1315
01:08:47,160 --> 01:08:49,160
Speaker 1: help but wonder knowing that he wasn't allowed to wear

1316
01:08:49,240 --> 01:08:52,759
Speaker 1: jeans as a kid, if the secret to his madness

1317
01:08:52,840 --> 01:08:54,600
Speaker 1: might not be as simple as the fact that his

1318
01:08:54,680 --> 01:08:58,879
Speaker 1: mom wouldn't buy him Jenkos. You know, that was everyone's

1319
01:08:58,920 --> 01:09:01,920
Speaker 1: cross to bear in uh in in in middle school,

1320
01:09:02,640 --> 01:09:05,639
Speaker 1: whether or not you could get Jenkos. So I sure did.

1321
01:09:05,800 --> 01:09:07,680
Speaker 1: I was able to get some. Oh yeah, I had

1322
01:09:07,720 --> 01:09:11,120
Speaker 1: a pair of Jenkos abs a fucking lutley um. But

1323
01:09:11,200 --> 01:09:18,240
Speaker 1: tragically Kim jong Un did not. Now it's time for

1324
01:09:18,280 --> 01:09:21,000
Speaker 1: another ad pivot, and I was going to do a

1325
01:09:21,080 --> 01:09:24,360
Speaker 1: Jinkos ad but uh, but but I don't know if

1326
01:09:24,360 --> 01:09:27,800
Speaker 1: the company still exists. So a lot of our ads

1327
01:09:27,800 --> 01:09:31,360
Speaker 1: are randomly slotted and God willing. When we dropped a

1328
01:09:31,360 --> 01:09:35,320
Speaker 1: ad break, it will be an ad for Jenkos, you know,

1329
01:09:35,360 --> 01:09:38,360
Speaker 1: if it's dick pills, still pretty good, still pretty good

1330
01:09:38,360 --> 01:09:49,439
Speaker 1: ad products. We're back. We're back. We're talking about Kim

1331
01:09:49,520 --> 01:09:53,240
Speaker 1: Jong un in middle school and high school in Switzerland,

1332
01:09:53,320 --> 01:09:56,519
Speaker 1: where he was at best a mediocre student, like the

1333
01:09:56,520 --> 01:10:01,160
Speaker 1: host of this podcast and uh most of its and

1334
01:10:01,360 --> 01:10:04,360
Speaker 1: our guest. Yeah, a lot of see students in the

1335
01:10:04,479 --> 01:10:09,679
Speaker 1: entertainment industry. It's kind of kind of what fuels Hollywood. Absolutely, yeah,

1336
01:10:10,240 --> 01:10:14,040
Speaker 1: don't trust any a students in Hollywood. We just had

1337
01:10:14,040 --> 01:10:18,080
Speaker 1: a soundboard fall off of the wall. Now, Eli, I

1338
01:10:18,080 --> 01:10:21,080
Speaker 1: need to see student move I need you to make sure.

1339
01:10:21,439 --> 01:10:25,720
Speaker 1: Is the poison room still intact? Yes? Okay are you?

1340
01:10:25,800 --> 01:10:28,040
Speaker 1: Are you aware of the poison room? Has anyone told

1341
01:10:28,040 --> 01:10:31,240
Speaker 1: you that room? Is that a real thing? Yeah, there's

1342
01:10:31,240 --> 01:10:34,559
Speaker 1: a poison room. You see that glass balcony behind you

1343
01:10:34,600 --> 01:10:37,640
Speaker 1: that's walled off from the outside. It's it's filled with

1344
01:10:37,680 --> 01:10:40,320
Speaker 1: poison because of the off gassing of the materials they

1345
01:10:40,400 --> 01:10:42,960
Speaker 1: used to seal it. So if that door opens, everyone dies.

1346
01:10:44,720 --> 01:10:47,479
Speaker 1: That's the poison room. Yeah. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, for

1347
01:10:47,479 --> 01:10:55,120
Speaker 1: for for now, it's sealed for now. Look at Yeah. Yeah,

1348
01:10:55,200 --> 01:10:56,760
Speaker 1: it's it's like a little bit of a sort of

1349
01:10:56,800 --> 01:10:59,759
Speaker 1: Damocles situation where where one day we will be struck

1350
01:10:59,760 --> 01:11:02,960
Speaker 1: down for our hubris of having the poison room. I

1351
01:11:03,040 --> 01:11:08,320
Speaker 1: do like podcasting um in a danger zone. In fact,

1352
01:11:08,360 --> 01:11:11,439
Speaker 1: that's what makes I think a podcast more captivating and

1353
01:11:11,520 --> 01:11:14,800
Speaker 1: probably what what's fueling us. Yeah, is the risk of

1354
01:11:14,960 --> 01:11:20,080
Speaker 1: pointless death. Um yeah, knowing what he loved, Yeah, exactly,

1355
01:11:20,120 --> 01:11:25,000
Speaker 1: being next to a room filled with poison. Uh. Yeah,

1356
01:11:25,080 --> 01:11:28,120
Speaker 1: So Kim jong un was in not a great student

1357
01:11:28,360 --> 01:11:31,560
Speaker 1: um and uh as a foreigner who didn't speak the

1358
01:11:31,600 --> 01:11:36,800
Speaker 1: local language. He was, uh, you know, he was kind

1359
01:11:36,800 --> 01:11:39,640
Speaker 1: of an outsider. Uh. He had two friends who were

1360
01:11:39,680 --> 01:11:41,680
Speaker 1: really like he actually hung out with a lot, and

1361
01:11:41,680 --> 01:11:44,960
Speaker 1: they were both kids who weren't Swiss originally to um,

1362
01:11:45,040 --> 01:11:46,639
Speaker 1: so they all kind of had that to bond over

1363
01:11:46,760 --> 01:11:49,519
Speaker 1: the fact that they didn't speak the language very well. UM.

1364
01:11:49,640 --> 01:11:52,760
Speaker 1: Kim jong un was particularly well known for his temper tantrum's,

1365
01:11:52,800 --> 01:11:56,040
Speaker 1: particularly when his classmates would switch from speaking High German,

1366
01:11:56,120 --> 01:11:59,520
Speaker 1: which he knew, to Swiss German, which he could not understand.

1367
01:12:00,240 --> 01:12:02,799
Speaker 1: One girl who was a classmate of Kim Jongan's reported

1368
01:12:03,000 --> 01:12:05,120
Speaker 1: he kicked us in the shins and even spat at

1369
01:12:05,240 --> 01:12:09,120
Speaker 1: us when they would start using Swiss German, and she

1370
01:12:09,479 --> 01:12:11,439
Speaker 1: did add that over time he seemed to thaw and

1371
01:12:11,479 --> 01:12:13,839
Speaker 1: get more used to dealing with his classmates his equals

1372
01:12:13,920 --> 01:12:16,559
Speaker 1: rather than his objects for him to abuse. Did any

1373
01:12:16,600 --> 01:12:19,240
Speaker 1: of them ever fight back? I'm curious what the reaction

1374
01:12:19,400 --> 01:12:22,759
Speaker 1: was or what the students were they were told to

1375
01:12:22,800 --> 01:12:25,200
Speaker 1: react to it. Um. You know, they didn't know that

1376
01:12:25,240 --> 01:12:27,080
Speaker 1: he was the son of a dictator. I think they

1377
01:12:27,160 --> 01:12:28,840
Speaker 1: just thought that he was like he probably would have

1378
01:12:28,880 --> 01:12:32,160
Speaker 1: just come across as like a mostly quiet kid who

1379
01:12:32,360 --> 01:12:34,320
Speaker 1: every now and then would have temperate trantrams and like

1380
01:12:34,360 --> 01:12:36,559
Speaker 1: spit on people. And I'm sure the teachers scolded him

1381
01:12:36,560 --> 01:12:39,360
Speaker 1: and stuff, but like, you know, it's not a it's

1382
01:12:39,360 --> 01:12:42,200
Speaker 1: not like it's a it's a Swiss you know school.

1383
01:12:42,240 --> 01:12:46,599
Speaker 1: So they're they're they're pretty light on the the discipline. Yeah,

1384
01:12:46,600 --> 01:12:48,360
Speaker 1: they're not going to be like hitting him and stuff.

1385
01:12:48,479 --> 01:12:49,640
Speaker 1: It's I'm gonna be like when I grew up in

1386
01:12:49,680 --> 01:12:51,960
Speaker 1: Oklahoma and they would paddle us. Yeah, because if you

1387
01:12:52,000 --> 01:12:53,640
Speaker 1: have But also like if you spit on someone at

1388
01:12:53,640 --> 01:12:57,360
Speaker 1: school here, you're liable to get knocked the funk out. Yeah,

1389
01:12:57,400 --> 01:12:59,680
Speaker 1: I don't think that's I don't think that happened to

1390
01:12:59,760 --> 01:13:01,760
Speaker 1: Kim Jong n. He might be a better person today

1391
01:13:01,800 --> 01:13:05,439
Speaker 1: if somebody had knocked him the funk out, But I

1392
01:13:05,439 --> 01:13:08,000
Speaker 1: have not run into any stories of that happening. And

1393
01:13:08,120 --> 01:13:09,920
Speaker 1: it seems like he was kind of isolated in a

1394
01:13:09,960 --> 01:13:13,160
Speaker 1: little bit lonely at school, but was not like bullied

1395
01:13:13,320 --> 01:13:16,280
Speaker 1: or or ostracized. It was more that like because he

1396
01:13:16,400 --> 01:13:18,839
Speaker 1: just didn't have a super good grasp at the language,

1397
01:13:18,840 --> 01:13:21,679
Speaker 1: he kind of felt like an outsider. Um. His chief

1398
01:13:21,760 --> 01:13:24,400
Speaker 1: love during this period continue to be a basketball. He

1399
01:13:24,439 --> 01:13:27,599
Speaker 1: wore only the best for games, Michael Jordan, replica Chicago

1400
01:13:27,640 --> 01:13:31,240
Speaker 1: Bulls jerseys, Chicago Bulls shorts, and of course the latest

1401
01:13:31,280 --> 01:13:35,840
Speaker 1: air Jordan's. According to The Great Successor, Kim's competitive side

1402
01:13:35,840 --> 01:13:37,960
Speaker 1: came out on the basketball court. He could be aggressive

1403
01:13:38,040 --> 01:13:40,640
Speaker 1: and often indulged in trash talk. He was serious on

1404
01:13:40,680 --> 01:13:43,280
Speaker 1: the court, hardly ever laughing or even talking, just focusing

1405
01:13:43,280 --> 01:13:45,320
Speaker 1: on the game. When things went badly for him, he

1406
01:13:45,320 --> 01:13:48,120
Speaker 1: would curse or even pound his head against the wall. Sometimes.

1407
01:13:48,160 --> 01:13:50,360
Speaker 1: In addition to the other Asian teenagers, Kim Jong un

1408
01:13:50,439 --> 01:13:52,439
Speaker 1: arrived with a couple of adults came along and set

1409
01:13:52,520 --> 01:13:55,360
Speaker 1: up small camping chairs beside the court, keeping score on

1410
01:13:55,360 --> 01:13:57,960
Speaker 1: a little board and clapping when Kim landed a basket.

1411
01:13:59,040 --> 01:14:02,479
Speaker 1: So again, he's as close to normal as you can

1412
01:14:02,520 --> 01:14:04,800
Speaker 1: have a childhood as a dictator during the periods of

1413
01:14:04,800 --> 01:14:07,360
Speaker 1: time where he's in Switzerland. But it's still not normal,

1414
01:14:08,040 --> 01:14:12,120
Speaker 1: it's still completely so. One of Kim's few friends at

1415
01:14:12,160 --> 01:14:14,720
Speaker 1: school noted that he also played basketball at home on

1416
01:14:14,800 --> 01:14:17,639
Speaker 1: his PlayStation when he couldn't be out on the court. Um,

1417
01:14:17,760 --> 01:14:20,200
Speaker 1: they said, the whole world for him was just basketball

1418
01:14:20,280 --> 01:14:23,839
Speaker 1: all the time. Another of his friends, kidnamed Marco Imhoff,

1419
01:14:23,960 --> 01:14:26,320
Speaker 1: spoke about the occasional hints he would see of the

1420
01:14:26,360 --> 01:14:29,120
Speaker 1: man Kim Jong Un would become. One time he came

1421
01:14:29,120 --> 01:14:31,600
Speaker 1: over to Jong UN's house for dinner and their spaghetti

1422
01:14:31,680 --> 01:14:34,400
Speaker 1: was cold. Uh. He saw Kim Jong Und snap at

1423
01:14:34,439 --> 01:14:36,920
Speaker 1: the cook brutally enough that it's stuck in Marco's mind.

1424
01:14:36,960 --> 01:14:40,280
Speaker 1: Twenty years later, Interviews with other classmates paint a picture

1425
01:14:40,280 --> 01:14:43,919
Speaker 1: of a quiet, nerdy, basketball loving loner who absolutely avoided

1426
01:14:43,920 --> 01:14:46,559
Speaker 1: contact with girls and refused to share any details of

1427
01:14:46,600 --> 01:14:49,120
Speaker 1: his private life. One of his few good friends were

1428
01:14:49,160 --> 01:14:51,639
Speaker 1: called We weren't the dimmest kids in class, but neither

1429
01:14:51,680 --> 01:14:53,840
Speaker 1: were we the cleverest. We were always in the second tier.

1430
01:14:54,160 --> 01:14:57,040
Speaker 1: The teachers would see him struggling ashamedly and then move on.

1431
01:14:57,200 --> 01:14:59,160
Speaker 1: They left him in peace. He left without getting any

1432
01:14:59,160 --> 01:15:01,360
Speaker 1: exam results. Of all, he was much more interested in

1433
01:15:01,360 --> 01:15:07,200
Speaker 1: football and basketball than lessons. So yeah, that's him at

1434
01:15:07,240 --> 01:15:11,479
Speaker 1: school um In. When jong Un was fourteen, his mother

1435
01:15:11,600 --> 01:15:14,920
Speaker 1: was diagnosed with breast cancer. She sought treatment in France

1436
01:15:14,920 --> 01:15:17,400
Speaker 1: and would linger for several years, but she eventually died

1437
01:15:17,439 --> 01:15:20,439
Speaker 1: from the disease. Her brother and sister, who had acted

1438
01:15:20,479 --> 01:15:23,639
Speaker 1: as jong UN's fake Swiss parents for years decided that

1439
01:15:23,680 --> 01:15:26,840
Speaker 1: their sisters sickness was a sign that they should flee

1440
01:15:26,880 --> 01:15:30,000
Speaker 1: for safety. On May seventeenth, they went on the run

1441
01:15:30,040 --> 01:15:33,120
Speaker 1: with their three biological children, abandoning Kim Jong un and

1442
01:15:33,160 --> 01:15:35,719
Speaker 1: his brother, and showed up at the United States Embassy

1443
01:15:35,800 --> 01:15:38,200
Speaker 1: asking for asylum. They live in the United States to

1444
01:15:38,240 --> 01:15:41,000
Speaker 1: this day. Kim Jong un would spend his remaining time

1445
01:15:41,040 --> 01:15:43,280
Speaker 1: in Switzerland with a separate set of handlers, And we

1446
01:15:43,360 --> 01:15:46,800
Speaker 1: just don't know anything about how that impacted him emotionally.

1447
01:15:46,920 --> 01:15:48,840
Speaker 1: We don't really know anything about how he felt about

1448
01:15:48,880 --> 01:15:51,559
Speaker 1: his aunt and uncle. Um, we don't know how he

1449
01:15:51,600 --> 01:15:55,439
Speaker 1: felt about them fleeing for the United States. They in

1450
01:15:55,479 --> 01:15:59,080
Speaker 1: the interviews with the author of The Great Successor They Like,

1451
01:15:59,240 --> 01:16:01,840
Speaker 1: reported being frustrated at the coverage of Kim Jong un

1452
01:16:02,160 --> 01:16:03,920
Speaker 1: that they saw on TV and the States and how

1453
01:16:03,960 --> 01:16:05,840
Speaker 1: negative it always was. So they seemed to still be

1454
01:16:05,920 --> 01:16:08,640
Speaker 1: kind of protective towards him. But we don't really know

1455
01:16:08,680 --> 01:16:10,479
Speaker 1: if he took this as an abandonment or if it

1456
01:16:10,520 --> 01:16:12,200
Speaker 1: was just kind of water off of a duck's back.

1457
01:16:12,439 --> 01:16:16,120
Speaker 1: Oh man, I I'm this is what's most fascinating about

1458
01:16:16,160 --> 01:16:21,520
Speaker 1: it is his version is the most um complex of

1459
01:16:21,240 --> 01:16:23,880
Speaker 1: all of the succession, you know what I mean, Like

1460
01:16:23,960 --> 01:16:27,920
Speaker 1: his his other his his father and his um his

1461
01:16:27,960 --> 01:16:32,320
Speaker 1: grandfather had much more like their stories are pretty you know,

1462
01:16:32,439 --> 01:16:36,000
Speaker 1: like almost streamlined, whereas his has a lot of uh

1463
01:16:36,040 --> 01:16:39,200
Speaker 1: like complexities to it. And I'm sure I would wager

1464
01:16:39,240 --> 01:16:42,519
Speaker 1: to say that it probably did affect them in the

1465
01:16:42,600 --> 01:16:44,439
Speaker 1: same way that he probably learned that he was the

1466
01:16:44,439 --> 01:16:47,200
Speaker 1: product of an affair. I don't think those things at

1467
01:16:47,200 --> 01:16:50,000
Speaker 1: some point or another, they're gonna have some kind of

1468
01:16:50,040 --> 01:16:52,360
Speaker 1: impact on you. Yeah, it's just kind of hard to

1469
01:16:52,360 --> 01:16:54,760
Speaker 1: say what that is like. And that's part of why

1470
01:16:55,000 --> 01:16:57,760
Speaker 1: I'm concluding all of the Kim's in two episodes as

1471
01:16:57,760 --> 01:17:00,400
Speaker 1: opposed to doing a two partter on Kim Sung and

1472
01:17:00,520 --> 01:17:02,800
Speaker 1: Kim Jong ill is that, like, we just don't have

1473
01:17:02,960 --> 01:17:05,680
Speaker 1: that much really solid fact about how the two grew up.

1474
01:17:05,720 --> 01:17:08,320
Speaker 1: We know enough about Kim Jong un that you can

1475
01:17:08,320 --> 01:17:11,600
Speaker 1: really make him into a person in your head, um,

1476
01:17:11,680 --> 01:17:14,599
Speaker 1: which you can't with the others. And two thousand two,

1477
01:17:14,880 --> 01:17:17,240
Speaker 1: Kim Jong un returned to North Korea full time to

1478
01:17:17,280 --> 01:17:20,240
Speaker 1: attend the Kim Il sung Military Academy, where he learned

1479
01:17:20,240 --> 01:17:22,360
Speaker 1: how to manage the army that he had technically been

1480
01:17:22,400 --> 01:17:25,360
Speaker 1: a general of from the age of about seven. Official

1481
01:17:25,360 --> 01:17:28,200
Speaker 1: North Korean propaganda assures us that he was instantly so

1482
01:17:28,240 --> 01:17:30,680
Speaker 1: good at war that he wound up teaching his instructors

1483
01:17:30,760 --> 01:17:33,719
Speaker 1: rather than learning from them. He would regularly keep senior

1484
01:17:33,760 --> 01:17:36,360
Speaker 1: military officials up late into the night, advising them on

1485
01:17:36,400 --> 01:17:38,960
Speaker 1: how to organize their forces, and shushing them whenever they

1486
01:17:38,960 --> 01:17:41,519
Speaker 1: told him he really ought to get some sleep. That's,

1487
01:17:41,640 --> 01:17:43,720
Speaker 1: of course, the official North Korea yea I was going

1488
01:17:43,760 --> 01:17:48,439
Speaker 1: to say, propaganda, Yeah, yeah, yeah. And two thousand eight,

1489
01:17:48,479 --> 01:17:50,599
Speaker 1: Kim Jong il's health took a major turn for the worst.

1490
01:17:50,720 --> 01:17:53,400
Speaker 1: He clearly realized that his time was ending and hurriedly

1491
01:17:53,479 --> 01:17:56,280
Speaker 1: rushed the process of making his son his official successor.

1492
01:17:56,880 --> 01:17:59,320
Speaker 1: That same year, he called a Workers Party Congress and

1493
01:17:59,320 --> 01:18:02,160
Speaker 1: had them vote to confirm Kim Jong un as his successor.

1494
01:18:02,560 --> 01:18:04,600
Speaker 1: This was the first time many North Koreans would have

1495
01:18:04,600 --> 01:18:07,120
Speaker 1: heard of the boy and Jong Il's case, that process

1496
01:18:07,160 --> 01:18:09,800
Speaker 1: had started in the late nineteen seventies. Given him twenty

1497
01:18:09,880 --> 01:18:12,120
Speaker 1: years is a public figure in North Korea before taking

1498
01:18:12,160 --> 01:18:15,080
Speaker 1: the baton from his father, Kim Jong un would only

1499
01:18:15,120 --> 01:18:19,920
Speaker 1: have three years before taking power. No, sorry, just one question,

1500
01:18:19,960 --> 01:18:21,680
Speaker 1: what is the age difference when each of them get

1501
01:18:21,680 --> 01:18:25,679
Speaker 1: assumed in again, I I let's see here. Kim Jong

1502
01:18:25,960 --> 01:18:30,439
Speaker 1: was born in uh No was yeah, yeah, he was

1503
01:18:30,439 --> 01:18:33,080
Speaker 1: born in eighty four, and Kim Il sung or Kim

1504
01:18:33,360 --> 01:18:39,200
Speaker 1: Kim Jong il was born in uh nineteen forty or

1505
01:18:39,280 --> 01:18:43,080
Speaker 1: so like, Um, so he's born in forty one. He

1506
01:18:43,120 --> 01:18:45,200
Speaker 1: took you'd been like fifty three when he took power

1507
01:18:45,400 --> 01:18:48,479
Speaker 1: in his early fifties, so he, I mean, clearly obviously,

1508
01:18:49,080 --> 01:18:52,160
Speaker 1: uh he was the youngest Kim Jong Yeah, yeah, yeah,

1509
01:18:52,240 --> 01:18:55,160
Speaker 1: Kim Jong was absolutely the young but like a margin,

1510
01:18:55,320 --> 01:18:58,479
Speaker 1: like it's crazy. Yeah, he's a lot younger than his

1511
01:18:58,560 --> 01:19:01,600
Speaker 1: dad is when when he takes power, which is you know,

1512
01:19:01,680 --> 01:19:05,919
Speaker 1: largely because Kim Jong ill was an alcoholic who poisoned

1513
01:19:05,920 --> 01:19:09,760
Speaker 1: his body and died very young. Um, which you know,

1514
01:19:09,800 --> 01:19:12,519
Speaker 1: if you're going to be a dictator, my preferences that

1515
01:19:12,560 --> 01:19:15,880
Speaker 1: you poison yourself to So yeah, I'm down with that.

1516
01:19:16,280 --> 01:19:19,160
Speaker 1: I'm not gonna complain. Um. With no time to waste,

1517
01:19:19,240 --> 01:19:21,439
Speaker 1: Kim Jong Ill began promoting his son up the ladder

1518
01:19:21,479 --> 01:19:23,160
Speaker 1: like he was trying to win a sprinting award in

1519
01:19:23,200 --> 01:19:26,400
Speaker 1: the Nepotism Olympics. The propaganda departments of North Korea began

1520
01:19:26,479 --> 01:19:29,320
Speaker 1: referring to Kim Jong Un as the leader comrade. The

1521
01:19:29,400 --> 01:19:32,040
Speaker 1: regime printed out booklets they sent to the army titled

1522
01:19:32,080 --> 01:19:35,360
Speaker 1: the Material in Teaching the Greatness of Respected Comrade General

1523
01:19:35,439 --> 01:19:38,400
Speaker 1: Kim Jong Un. It informed them that at age three,

1524
01:19:38,520 --> 01:19:40,800
Speaker 1: Kim Jong un had been capable of shooting out light

1525
01:19:40,840 --> 01:19:43,280
Speaker 1: bulbs from a hundred yards away with a handgun. By

1526
01:19:43,320 --> 01:19:45,000
Speaker 1: the time he was eight, the book claimed he could

1527
01:19:45,080 --> 01:19:48,040
Speaker 1: drive large trucks at eighty miles an hour. Shortly after

1528
01:19:48,080 --> 01:19:50,559
Speaker 1: publishing this, Kim Jong un was promoted to command of

1529
01:19:50,560 --> 01:19:54,120
Speaker 1: the Korean People's Army, which was hereafter renamed the Kim

1530
01:19:54,200 --> 01:20:00,080
Speaker 1: Jong Un Armed Forces. So it's cool. Yeah, she's the

1531
01:20:00,080 --> 01:20:02,920
Speaker 1: the turnaround. Also, I love that a that a big

1532
01:20:02,960 --> 01:20:05,040
Speaker 1: flex for him is driving a huge truck at eight.

1533
01:20:05,920 --> 01:20:07,760
Speaker 1: Oh yeah as a little kid. Yeah, that is a

1534
01:20:07,760 --> 01:20:11,160
Speaker 1: big flex. Yeah. Now, the military that Kim Jong Un

1535
01:20:11,280 --> 01:20:13,679
Speaker 1: was about to inherit would be a fundamentally different force

1536
01:20:13,680 --> 01:20:15,800
Speaker 1: from the one that his grandfather had built and his

1537
01:20:15,880 --> 01:20:18,680
Speaker 1: father had inherited. This is because on October three, two

1538
01:20:18,680 --> 01:20:22,280
Speaker 1: thousand and six, the regime detonated its first nuclear device.

1539
01:20:22,800 --> 01:20:25,000
Speaker 1: There is some debate still over whether or not it

1540
01:20:25,040 --> 01:20:27,320
Speaker 1: was a successful test of a low yield nuke or

1541
01:20:27,360 --> 01:20:30,719
Speaker 1: an accidental fizzle that wound up being far smaller than intended.

1542
01:20:31,080 --> 01:20:34,640
Speaker 1: In either case, the detonation was an actual nuclear explosion,

1543
01:20:35,080 --> 01:20:38,000
Speaker 1: and North Korea would only get better at manufacturing weapons

1544
01:20:38,000 --> 01:20:40,559
Speaker 1: of mass destruction from that point on. Over the next

1545
01:20:40,600 --> 01:20:43,120
Speaker 1: five years, as Kim Jong ill sickened and began to die,

1546
01:20:43,240 --> 01:20:46,280
Speaker 1: Kim Jong un increasingly took up the organs of power.

1547
01:20:46,760 --> 01:20:48,640
Speaker 1: The pride of being the first North Korean leader to

1548
01:20:48,680 --> 01:20:50,760
Speaker 1: develop nukes would go to his father, but Kim Jong

1549
01:20:50,840 --> 01:20:52,439
Speaker 1: un would be the first of his line to learn

1550
01:20:52,439 --> 01:20:54,320
Speaker 1: how to use the weapons to get what he wanted.

1551
01:20:54,520 --> 01:20:58,960
Speaker 1: We'll talk about that and much more in Part two. Eli,

1552
01:20:59,439 --> 01:21:01,840
Speaker 1: you want to plug your plas? Yes, please, thank you

1553
01:21:01,880 --> 01:21:05,080
Speaker 1: so much for having me. I uh check out Closure,

1554
01:21:05,120 --> 01:21:08,360
Speaker 1: the podcast That Never Ends, available on iTunes, Spotify, wherever

1555
01:21:08,360 --> 01:21:10,920
Speaker 1: you get your podcasts. And I have another podcast called

1556
01:21:10,920 --> 01:21:13,280
Speaker 1: pot as a Woman. But I should say what closures about.

1557
01:21:13,360 --> 01:21:14,840
Speaker 1: I don't think closure is real. And I interview a

1558
01:21:14,840 --> 01:21:17,000
Speaker 1: bunch of people they tell different stories about whether or

1559
01:21:17,040 --> 01:21:19,920
Speaker 1: not they found closure in certain things, and uh, it

1560
01:21:20,000 --> 01:21:22,920
Speaker 1: sounds weighty, but it's also great conversations. And then I

1561
01:21:23,040 --> 01:21:25,800
Speaker 1: co host podcast Theresa Lee called pot as a Woman

1562
01:21:25,840 --> 01:21:28,439
Speaker 1: where we do a track by track breakdown of Orianna

1563
01:21:28,479 --> 01:21:30,439
Speaker 1: Grandie's most recent albums and we have a bunch of

1564
01:21:30,439 --> 01:21:32,400
Speaker 1: our friends come on and talk about whether they're into

1565
01:21:32,400 --> 01:21:34,559
Speaker 1: it or not. And of course you can find me

1566
01:21:34,600 --> 01:21:38,040
Speaker 1: online on all the socials at elio Olsburg um and

1567
01:21:38,200 --> 01:21:41,160
Speaker 1: Eli Olsberg dot net for show information. And lastly, if

1568
01:21:41,160 --> 01:21:42,759
Speaker 1: you live in l A, I have a show called

1569
01:21:42,960 --> 01:21:45,559
Speaker 1: Performance Anxiety at the Pleasure Chest. It's a monthly stand

1570
01:21:45,640 --> 01:21:48,280
Speaker 1: up show second Tuesday of every month and I am

1571
01:21:48,360 --> 01:21:50,280
Speaker 1: Robert Evans. You can find me on the internet at

1572
01:21:50,320 --> 01:21:52,720
Speaker 1: I Write Okay on Twitter. You can find this podcast

1573
01:21:52,720 --> 01:21:54,880
Speaker 1: at Behind the Bastards dot com. You can fight us

1574
01:21:54,920 --> 01:21:58,640
Speaker 1: on Twitter and Instagram at at Bastards pod. Uh, and

1575
01:21:58,720 --> 01:22:01,679
Speaker 1: you can buy t shirts t public Behind the Bastards,

1576
01:22:01,720 --> 01:22:06,160
Speaker 1: So check those out. UM, check it all out. If

1577
01:22:06,200 --> 01:22:09,680
Speaker 1: you listening right now are the child of a dictator

1578
01:22:10,040 --> 01:22:13,599
Speaker 1: who is going to school in a Western country, hiding

1579
01:22:13,600 --> 01:22:16,639
Speaker 1: out under an assumed name and listening to podcasts as

1580
01:22:16,680 --> 01:22:22,400
Speaker 1: you bide your time until gaining power. Uh, just remember, uh,

1581
01:22:22,800 --> 01:22:27,080
Speaker 1: I do take bribes. That's That's all I have to say. Um, Sam,

1582
01:22:27,280 --> 01:22:29,280
Speaker 1: I would, Yeah, I would, I would love to write

1583
01:22:29,320 --> 01:22:32,360
Speaker 1: a positive podcast about you and your family, so so

1584
01:22:32,560 --> 01:22:35,680
Speaker 1: hit me up. Um we could, we could do a sponsorship,

1585
01:22:35,880 --> 01:22:38,559
Speaker 1: you know, yeah, and Venmo and me at Eli Olsburg

1586
01:22:38,840 --> 01:22:42,040
Speaker 1: if you if you want to invide me to talk

1587
01:22:42,080 --> 01:22:45,639
Speaker 1: about if you're gonna start getting like the Kadafi's kids

1588
01:22:45,640 --> 01:22:51,400
Speaker 1: sending new cash. He's a big, big fan of the show. Um,

1589
01:22:51,439 --> 01:22:54,439
Speaker 1: that's it, that's the episode. We're done here, go go

1590
01:22:55,280 --> 01:22:56,320
Speaker 1: hug a cat or something.