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The Screen · Big Brother: North Korea’s Forgotten Prince

0:07
Speaker 1: In the late eighteen hundreds, before anybody in rural East
0:11
Speaker 1: Asia had ever heard the name Karl Marx. The Kim
0:15
Speaker 1: family was like any other, a family of hard working
0:18
Speaker 1: farmers living among a close neck clan of villagers. The
0:23
Speaker 1: Kims were poor. Their dinners consisted of gruel, with meat
0:28
Speaker 1: and fruit as rare luxuries. The family didn't even own
0:32
Speaker 1: a clock. If anybody wanted to know the time, someone
0:36
Speaker 1: would have to run over to the neighbor's house. The
0:39
Speaker 1: kids found solace in Christianity and attended church every Sunday.
0:45
Speaker 1: The family also prized education, and around the turn of
0:49
Speaker 1: the century, Kim Il Sung's father, then just a small boy,
0:54
Speaker 1: enrolled in class at a modest one room schoolhouse topped
0:58
Speaker 1: with a thatched roof. The young Kim was the class monitor,
1:03
Speaker 1: something of a teacher's pet. His lecturer, however, was a
1:08
Speaker 1: notorious drunk. Each day, the teacher held court in front
1:14
Speaker 1: of class, swaying back and forth as he drained the
1:18
Speaker 1: bottles of wine. He'd frequently finished the glass and point
1:22
Speaker 1: at the young Kim, sending him to fetch more. Kimil
1:28
Speaker 1: Song's father meekly obliged, but one day after class, the
1:33
Speaker 1: young boy spied his teacher walking down the street. The
1:37
Speaker 1: man could barely stand, his legs wobbling as he tried
1:41
Speaker 1: to maintain balance. Suddenly, the teacher swayed forward, his legs
1:47
Speaker 1: unable to keep up, and he tumbled base first into
1:50
Speaker 1: a muddy ditch. The boy blushed an embarrassment. A few
1:55
Speaker 1: days later, as the young Kim sat in class, the
1:59
Speaker 1: teacher point it in his direction and asked him to
2:02
Speaker 1: make the familiar trip for wine. The customary filial piety
2:06
Speaker 1: extended to teachers after all. Kim collected his instructor's money
2:11
Speaker 1: and slipped out for the market. But Kim couldn't shake
2:15
Speaker 1: the shameful image of his drunken teacher lying on the ground,
2:20
Speaker 1: face soaked in mud, and then an idea. He gripped
2:26
Speaker 1: his teacher's bottle and heaved it against the rock. Shards
2:29
Speaker 1: of glass burst over the dirt. The boy returned to class,
2:34
Speaker 1: broken bottle in hand, clothing stained with wine, gasping for air,
2:38
Speaker 1: and told the teacher an elaborate story about how he
2:41
Speaker 1: had been chased by a tiger. He had run for
2:44
Speaker 1: his life and tripped, shattering the bottle who the teacher
2:49
Speaker 1: listened with horror. This time, he turned red and shame.
2:57
Speaker 1: Later that day, the young Kim returned home and told
3:00
Speaker 1: his father what had happened. The family elder listened to
3:03
Speaker 1: his son's story and nodded in pride. Then he leaned
3:08
Speaker 1: forward and said something that would cement itself into North
3:12
Speaker 1: Korean lore. If pupils peep into their teacher's private life frequently,
3:21
Speaker 1: they lose their awe of him. The teacher must give
3:25
Speaker 1: his pupils a firm belief that their teacher neither eats
3:29
Speaker 1: nor urinates. Only then can he maintain his authority at school.
3:36
Speaker 1: So teachers should set up a screen and live behind it.
3:42
Speaker 1: Set up a screen and live behind it. Years later,
3:48
Speaker 1: the young Kim would share that advice with his own son,
3:51
Speaker 1: Kim il Sung, the future Supreme Leader, would find the
3:55
Speaker 1: anecdote so stirring, so wise, that he had included in
3:59
Speaker 1: his official memoirs. Its lessons would become central to his
4:04
Speaker 1: philosophy on life and leadership. Today, the story of the
4:10
Speaker 1: teacher still serves as a model for the Kim family.
4:14
Speaker 1: If an authority wants to maintain his grip on power,
4:17
Speaker 1: his divine god given right to rule over others, then
4:22
Speaker 1: he must find a way to hide all faults. Anyone
4:27
Speaker 1: who compromises or desecrates that carefully calibrated image, whether it's
4:33
Speaker 1: a journalist or a movie made by Sony or even
4:36
Speaker 1: your own son, is threatening to do more than merely
4:39
Speaker 1: damage a man's ego. They challenge the very structure, the
4:44
Speaker 1: very foundation of authority itself. The screen, in other words,
4:51
Speaker 1: must be protected at all costs. I'm eaten Lee, and
5:01
Speaker 1: in this episode we explore the extreme lengths the North
5:05
Speaker 1: Korean regime will go to to protect its image, and
5:09
Speaker 1: how the country's obsession with that very image led not
5:13
Speaker 1: only to its downfall but to Kim Jong nams as well.
5:17
Speaker 1: But what the North Korean regime did is they really
5:19
Speaker 1: emphasized Korean as. They said, we are going to be
5:22
Speaker 1: the most Korean of the two Koreas. These people would
5:25
Speaker 1: be publicly executed and their families sent to labor in
5:28
Speaker 1: central political detention facilities. Many North Korean defectors say the leadership,
5:34
Speaker 1: it's like the sun. You don't want to get too
5:35
Speaker 1: close because you're room. You don't want to get too
5:37
Speaker 1: far because you'll be freezing. And he was too close
5:41
Speaker 1: and was scorched by it. This is big brother after
5:54
Speaker 1: the Tokyo Disneyland incident, pundits and went wild with speculation
5:59
Speaker 1: Kim Jong Nam, who was being groomed to inherit North
6:02
Speaker 1: Korea's communist dynasty, was unceremoniously kicked out of Japan yesterday
6:08
Speaker 1: after he tried to sneak into the country with his
6:10
Speaker 1: family for a trip to Tokyo Disneyland. It was two
6:14
Speaker 1: thousand and one. This was one of the first times
6:17
Speaker 1: a member of North Korea's royal family had been seen
6:20
Speaker 1: outside the country in public Journalists flocked to Tokyo and
6:26
Speaker 1: analysts poured over images, searching for hidden meaning in everything
6:31
Speaker 1: from Kim Jong Nam's goal to wristwatch to his trendy
6:34
Speaker 1: around glasses. Years later, analysts would suggest that Kim Jong
6:39
Speaker 1: Nam was kicked out of North Korea and sent to
6:41
Speaker 1: the gambling mecca of Macau all because of the Tokyo
6:45
Speaker 1: Disneyland incident. It was, after all, an international embarrassment. Here
6:52
Speaker 1: was the son of the world's most famous living communist
6:55
Speaker 1: dictator trying to cross international borders to visit what is
6:59
Speaker 1: probably the most unabashedly capitalist organization on the planet. But
7:04
Speaker 1: many experts we interviewed, including the North Korea watcher Michael Madden,
7:09
Speaker 1: I think these pundits are wrong. You know, you know,
7:13
Speaker 1: it's an easier narrative. I think for some people to
7:16
Speaker 1: say that Kim jong nam was the successor and because
7:19
Speaker 1: he happened to want to go to Tokyo Disney Resort
7:22
Speaker 1: with his family in two thousand one, well, lo and
7:25
Speaker 1: behold he got passed over for succession. Then that's just
7:29
Speaker 1: not true. Why. Well, because the Kims are frankly hypocrites.
7:37
Speaker 1: The royal family has been visiting disney resorts for decades.
7:41
Speaker 1: Years before the incident, Kim Jong un and his mother
7:44
Speaker 1: went to Tokyo to ride those same teacups. Nor was
7:48
Speaker 1: Kim jong nam exiled for using a fake Dominican passport.
7:52
Speaker 1: Kim Jong un and his immediate family routinely use fake
7:55
Speaker 1: Brazilian passports to travel abroad all the time, so did
7:59
Speaker 1: the rest of a family. Kim Jong Il wasn't angry
8:03
Speaker 1: that his son went to Japan or that he wanted
8:05
Speaker 1: to go to Disney. He was angry that his son
8:08
Speaker 1: got caught. Kim Jong Il was obsessed with the family's privacy.
8:14
Speaker 1: He sincerely felt that his legitimacy depended on maintaining the
8:18
Speaker 1: so called screen. In fact, most North Koreans didn't even
8:23
Speaker 1: know that dear Leader had children at all. The fact
8:27
Speaker 1: that Kim jong Nam attracted so much attention to himself
8:30
Speaker 1: did more than puncture the all powerful, very private world
8:35
Speaker 1: of Kim Jong Il. It had broken precedent. Kim children
8:39
Speaker 1: historically were neither seen nor heard, but Kim jong Nam
8:45
Speaker 1: had drawn attention to himself and had essentially snubbed the leader.
8:51
Speaker 1: This put the entire system at risk, and that's because
8:56
Speaker 1: the Kim regime controls the flow of information. Every radio,
9:01
Speaker 1: every television must be registered with the police and can
9:05
Speaker 1: only pick up domestics state sponsored channels. Loudspeakers are sprinkled
9:10
Speaker 1: across cities and towns, playing patriotic Kim's every morning and
9:14
Speaker 1: relaying public service announcements. Of course, activists outside of the
9:19
Speaker 1: country try to break through this wall of propaganda. That's
9:23
Speaker 1: why the thirty parallel the line separating North and South
9:26
Speaker 1: Korea see some of the most intense radio jamming activity
9:30
Speaker 1: in the world. In two thousand one, as news agencies
9:36
Speaker 1: buzzed about Kim Jong Nam's deportation, Kim Jong Il could
9:40
Speaker 1: do little more than cross his fingers and hope this
9:43
Speaker 1: barricade of propaganda would hold. In other words, the Tokyo
9:48
Speaker 1: Disneyland incident created a lot of unnecessary stress for Kim
9:52
Speaker 1: Jong NAMA's father. But was that the reason he was
9:55
Speaker 1: passed over as successor? Was that why he was kicked
9:59
Speaker 1: out of the country. Maybe, But there's another theory, because
10:05
Speaker 1: a few years earlier, the people who had raised Kim
10:09
Speaker 1: jong nam had done the unthinkable, and then he began
10:14
Speaker 1: having ideas that not only threatened the stability of the regime,
10:18
Speaker 1: it threatened the life of his father. In the early
10:24
Speaker 1: nineteen nineties, just as Kim jong Nam was gaining prominence
10:28
Speaker 1: in the regime, Residence Number fifteen was in turmoil. All over.
10:34
Speaker 1: Members of Cheng Nam's family were defecting at an alarming rate.
10:40
Speaker 1: The exodus started in two when Kim's cousin I Hanyon
10:46
Speaker 1: had been studying in Switzerland. One day, the cousin made
10:50
Speaker 1: a fateful call to the South Korean embassy and asked
10:53
Speaker 1: for asylum. According to Dr Sung Yun Lee, he would
10:58
Speaker 1: do everything to hide from the game. This person changed
11:02
Speaker 1: his name, underwent cosmetic surgery so that he would not
11:07
Speaker 1: be recognized by North Korean spies and the North Korean state.
11:11
Speaker 1: Back in Kiongyang, news of ease defection became a closely
11:15
Speaker 1: guarded secret. A member of the royal family defecting to
11:20
Speaker 1: the South. It was an embarrassing disgrace, the kind that
11:24
Speaker 1: could stay Kim Jong Il's reputation. The problem was he
11:29
Speaker 1: did not keep a low profile. By the nineties, he
11:33
Speaker 1: was struggling to make money, so he began leaking news
11:37
Speaker 1: to the press, earning an income by telling stories about
11:41
Speaker 1: the regime. He often talked about Kim Jong Nam's mother,
11:45
Speaker 1: who had been exiled to Russia. He was also making
11:49
Speaker 1: regular calls to his mother, Kim Jong Nam's aunt, and
11:53
Speaker 1: after just two months of conversations, he convinced her to
11:58
Speaker 1: defect as well. And then sometime in the mid ninety nineties,
12:04
Speaker 1: this nephew of Kim Jong wrote an expose a book
12:08
Speaker 1: on the royal family, which embarrassed Kim Jong. He published
12:13
Speaker 1: a tell all book about life behind the palace walls,
12:19
Speaker 1: a book you should know that became the source for
12:22
Speaker 1: a lot of palace intrigue you've heard in this podcast.
12:26
Speaker 1: But despite changing his name and his appearance, he could
12:30
Speaker 1: not escape the regime's wrath. He was standing outside his
12:36
Speaker 1: home when gunshots reign. He was assassinated by North Korean
12:41
Speaker 1: agents in Seoul, just one day before Kim Jong his birthday,
12:46
Speaker 1: which is a major national holiday. News of his murder
12:50
Speaker 1: shocked everybody who had once lived in Residence Number fifteen.
12:55
Speaker 1: He's mother, who had defected while visiting Geneva a year earlier,
13:00
Speaker 1: went into hiding in the European countryside. Like her son,
13:04
Speaker 1: she too would write a book that embarrassed the regime.
13:08
Speaker 1: In it, she compared palace life to jail. Even if
13:12
Speaker 1: there were plenty of books and I could take twelve
13:16
Speaker 1: baths a day and eat all kinds of delicacies, the
13:21
Speaker 1: residents was a prison to me. To this day, nobody
13:28
Speaker 1: knows where she is or if she's dead or alive.
13:33
Speaker 1: But the most shocking defection was the escape of Kim
13:37
Speaker 1: Jong Nam's childhood playmate Inamo. She fled the country and
13:45
Speaker 1: in a great risk to her own life, she too
13:48
Speaker 1: wrote a memoir detailing the ins and outs of palace life.
13:53
Speaker 1: I was terrified of being found and taken back to
13:56
Speaker 1: North Korea, of being taken home in the bag. I
14:02
Speaker 1: would have preferred to be killed on the spot rather
14:05
Speaker 1: than suffer alife in the minds or the countryside. By
14:09
Speaker 1: the countryside, she means a prison camp. As far as
14:14
Speaker 1: we know, Ena Walk remains in hiding, probably somewhere in France.
14:20
Speaker 1: Even sleuthing journalists like Na Fifield have had trouble reaching her.
14:25
Speaker 1: I was not able to speak with Na Mock. She
14:28
Speaker 1: declined to talk to me. I did speak to her
14:31
Speaker 1: husband several times, who said to me, you know, she
14:35
Speaker 1: fears for her life. Her half or her cousin, who
14:40
Speaker 1: was really like her brother, has been assassinated. Her own
14:44
Speaker 1: brother had been assassinated in South Korea, so she did
14:47
Speaker 1: not see any benefit to speaking about the North Korean
14:52
Speaker 1: regime in public. As Ena Walk put in her last
14:55
Speaker 1: public interview, being exposed means death to our family way,
15:01
Speaker 1: and she's right. In North Korea, having a single defector
15:05
Speaker 1: in your family can leave a deadly stain one your
15:09
Speaker 1: family cannot escape, and by the late nineties, Kim Jong
15:14
Speaker 1: Nam had at least three. If you do something that's wrong,
15:18
Speaker 1: your entire family will also pay the price. That's Dr
15:22
Speaker 1: Sandra Fahey, I'm an associate professor at Carlton University. She's
15:27
Speaker 1: been studying North Korea's human rights abuses for decades, and
15:32
Speaker 1: as she explains, it punishes and prevents defectors in a
15:37
Speaker 1: unique way. North Korea operates something that others produous love abuse.
15:44
Speaker 1: They will take the fact that you care for others
15:48
Speaker 1: and they will use that against you. So you care
15:51
Speaker 1: for your family, and that is a great way to
15:55
Speaker 1: control what you do. So you might want to leave
15:59
Speaker 1: North Korea, but you can't do that because if you do,
16:03
Speaker 1: your freedom comes at the cost of the life sometimes
16:08
Speaker 1: of others. In other words, if you defect, your loved
16:13
Speaker 1: ones will get sent to a prison camp. It will
16:16
Speaker 1: also tarnish your entire bloodline. Thanks to a cast system
16:21
Speaker 1: invented by Kim Il sung. This houngboon system I translated
16:25
Speaker 1: to mean like political ingredients, as if your politics is
16:30
Speaker 1: in your DNA and it's something that you inherit. This
16:33
Speaker 1: Houngboon is a system of classification. Rather than separating people
16:38
Speaker 1: by economic class, it separates citizens by their loyalty to
16:42
Speaker 1: the regime, and it's treated as natural as if it's
16:46
Speaker 1: ingrained in your DNA. This DNA cannot be altered, no
16:50
Speaker 1: amount of bribing, no amount of connections. Today, a computer
16:55
Speaker 1: database tracks every single person in North Korea, classifying them
17:00
Speaker 1: into fifty one different categories which determine whether they are loyal, wavering,
17:07
Speaker 1: or hostile. You're a place within this hungboun determines everything.
17:13
Speaker 1: This sung bun system determines what type of job you
17:16
Speaker 1: can get, what individuals you can marry, where you can live,
17:23
Speaker 1: and the worst part is people can do little to
17:26
Speaker 1: change their Basically, if your family had any connections with
17:31
Speaker 1: the South Koreans um or with the Japanese the Americans
17:36
Speaker 1: during the Korean War, then you are considered a collaborator,
17:40
Speaker 1: a trader, suspicious and of course your children would inherit
17:46
Speaker 1: this classification too. Today, most North Koreans live in the
17:52
Speaker 1: terrifying middle zone. Classified as wavering, who are considered hostile
18:00
Speaker 1: are sent straight to re education camps or to prison camps.
18:05
Speaker 1: Kim jong Nam was lucky. He was born to the
18:09
Speaker 1: strongest hungband possible. But after three close family members, especially
18:16
Speaker 1: those who had raised him as a child, had defected,
18:19
Speaker 1: his hungband status was permanently marked by an asterisk if
18:24
Speaker 1: loyalty was ingrained in DNA. What did that say about
18:28
Speaker 1: Kim Jong Nam? If his family could not be trusted.
18:32
Speaker 1: Could anybody trust the prince himself? It appears that in
18:37
Speaker 1: the upper echelons of North Korean society the answer was no.
18:43
Speaker 1: I've been trying. I've been trying to get this out
18:44
Speaker 1: for years. That again is Michael Madden, the North Korea Watcher,
18:50
Speaker 1: and he claims that in the early two thousand's rumor
18:54
Speaker 1: spread that somebody in the regime was out to get
18:58
Speaker 1: Kim Jong nams first assassination plot against Kim Jong nab
19:03
Speaker 1: the first credible threat on his life was in two
19:07
Speaker 1: thousand four, okay, And so that basically tells us that
19:11
Speaker 1: there were other North Korean elites that were a threat.
19:15
Speaker 1: But here's the question. Who were these elites trying to
19:20
Speaker 1: kill Kim Jong nam? And why? Was it because his
19:25
Speaker 1: trip to Disneyland had jeopardized the so called screen? Was
19:30
Speaker 1: it because of his family's history of defecting, or was
19:34
Speaker 1: there another reason one that might put the whole regime
19:39
Speaker 1: at risk. Kiml Song never intended it to be this way,
20:01
Speaker 1: at least not in the beginning. There was never supposed
20:05
Speaker 1: to be a cast system in North Korea. The DPRK,
20:09
Speaker 1: after all, was supposed to be a class free utopia.
20:14
Speaker 1: And there was a reason communism was such an attractive
20:17
Speaker 1: option to Koreans in the early nine hundreds. For centuries,
20:22
Speaker 1: the peninsula was arguably the most class divided region on
20:26
Speaker 1: the planet. The entire society was divided into hereditary ranks,
20:31
Speaker 1: the land owning aristocrats or young bun on top, the
20:35
Speaker 1: white collar bureaucrats or tongueing in the middle, the peasants
20:39
Speaker 1: and so called commoners or tongue men, and chung men
20:42
Speaker 1: near the bottom. And below all that the pick jung,
20:48
Speaker 1: the untouchables thrust into this hierarchy where the Doobe people
20:53
Speaker 1: stuck in what was the world's longest running system of
20:56
Speaker 1: chattel slavery in Korea, slavery acid for more than one thousand,
21:01
Speaker 1: five hundred uninterrupted years. By its height in the sixteen hundreds,
21:06
Speaker 1: slaves were estimated to make up thirty percent of the
21:09
Speaker 1: peninsula's population. In Slavery was legally abolished and the class
21:16
Speaker 1: system in eighteen nine, but culturally little changed. So you
21:24
Speaker 1: can probably understand why in the early twentieth century the
21:28
Speaker 1: promise of a classless communist society held such a lure.
21:32
Speaker 1: These socialist sympathies were only heightened by a rising tide
21:36
Speaker 1: of nationalism. By the time Cameo Song came around, the
21:40
Speaker 1: Korean Peninsula had been colonized and brutalized by Japanese settlers
21:45
Speaker 1: for decades leading up to World War Two. The Japanese
21:49
Speaker 1: occupation still stirs resentment in both the North and south.
21:55
Speaker 1: The Japanese were horrific to Koreans. That again is Dr
22:01
Speaker 1: Benjamin Young. They had made Koreans learn their non native language,
22:07
Speaker 1: They made them adopt Japanese name, They made them basically
22:11
Speaker 1: kind of get rid of their Korean nous. Koreans were
22:15
Speaker 1: forced to worship at Shinto shrines and watched helplessly as
22:19
Speaker 1: the Japanese destroyed thousands of cultural artifacts and historical documents.
22:25
Speaker 1: Native trees and plants were leveled to make room for
22:28
Speaker 1: non native species. The Royal Palace In's home, which had
22:33
Speaker 1: been erected in the thirteen hundreds, was partially destroyed. The
22:38
Speaker 1: human cost was jarring. Nearly a million Koreans were sent
22:42
Speaker 1: to Japan and forced into labor. Resistors were executed back home.
22:49
Speaker 1: Taxas skyrocketed, forcing Korean landowners to give up ancestral land.
22:55
Speaker 1: Japanese settlers swooped in and by the nineteen thirties controlled
23:00
Speaker 1: majority of the country's farmland. Millions of Koreans would be
23:04
Speaker 1: denied basic rights from rations to meal delivery simply because
23:10
Speaker 1: they had the wrong names. Untold numbers would starve. During
23:16
Speaker 1: World War Two, the Imperial Japanese Army would force up
23:19
Speaker 1: to four hundred thousand Korean girls and women into sex
23:23
Speaker 1: slavery as so called comfort women. In nineteen when Kimio
23:31
Speaker 1: Song was just six years old, he saw the brutality
23:35
Speaker 1: of the Japanese occupation first hand. His father had been
23:40
Speaker 1: arrested and imprisoned for joining a pro Korean organization. On
23:45
Speaker 1: the day of his father's release, the young Kim waited
23:49
Speaker 1: anxiously outside the prison. His father emerged from the seal gates,
23:54
Speaker 1: his body covered in wounds and bruises. He could barely walk.
24:00
Speaker 1: According to Chimio Sung's official memoirs, his father vowed to
24:05
Speaker 1: take revenge. The enemy must be made to pay for
24:12
Speaker 1: our blood, even if we must die. Kimilsung's father wouldn't
24:20
Speaker 1: be the first or last family member abused in prison.
24:26
Speaker 1: In one of Kimil Song's uncles joined three men and
24:30
Speaker 1: ambushed a Japanese police officer, shooting and killing him. After
24:36
Speaker 1: the murder, the men ran to a family friend in
24:38
Speaker 1: desperation for a place to hide. The friend graciously offered
24:42
Speaker 1: the fugitives a place to lie low as the Japanese searched,
24:46
Speaker 1: but it didn't take much time before the authority showed
24:50
Speaker 1: up at the door and put the assailants in handcuffs.
24:55
Speaker 1: The men had been duped. The family friend, it turns out,
25:00
Speaker 1: was an informant, a secret agent for the Japanese. As
25:05
Speaker 1: a result, Chimiel Sung's uncle would die in prison at
25:09
Speaker 1: the age of thirty one. The memory of that one
25:13
Speaker 1: man's betrayal would bake into a young Chimiel Sung's consciousness,
25:18
Speaker 1: and the resulting paranoia, the idea that nobody, not even
25:22
Speaker 1: your closest friends, could ever be trusted, would become a
25:26
Speaker 1: hallmark of the North Korean state. Chimiel Song put it
25:30
Speaker 1: this way. Even now, I say that it is good
25:33
Speaker 1: to believe in people, but that it is mistaken to
25:37
Speaker 1: harbor illusions about them, and that would become the other
25:42
Speaker 1: central part of the Kim family, so called screen. Chimiel
25:46
Speaker 1: Song realized that good pr was not enough. He would
25:50
Speaker 1: have to exterminate every untrustworthy element of society. From root
25:56
Speaker 1: to branch, even if that meant his own close friends
26:01
Speaker 1: and family in Kim jong Nam was rising through the
26:11
Speaker 1: ranks of the North Korean regime. Many of his family
26:14
Speaker 1: members had defected to Europe and South Korea, but he
26:18
Speaker 1: stayed home, ever loyal to his father. And then the
26:27
Speaker 1: rains came. The downpour was relentless. One area saw eighteen
26:34
Speaker 1: inches of rain in a single day, the equivalent of
26:38
Speaker 1: three Hurricane Katrina's. Coal mines flooded, water crushed hydro electric plants.
26:46
Speaker 1: Flooding wiped out nearly a million acres of farmland, causing
26:50
Speaker 1: fifteen billion dollars in damage nearly two million tons of
26:55
Speaker 1: grain gone. The next year, the rains fell again, and
27:07
Speaker 1: the year after that, like a cruel joke, there was
27:11
Speaker 1: a hellish drought. The result famine mass famine. The nineties
27:19
Speaker 1: exacerbated UH many of these chronic instability issues. Around six
27:24
Speaker 1: people die, Others put the number as high as two
27:28
Speaker 1: million people or of the population. By the late nineties,
27:34
Speaker 1: North Korea plunged into an epic humanitarian crisis. By the
27:39
Speaker 1: famine's peak, the country's gross national product would be cut
27:43
Speaker 1: almost in half. This was not the North Korea Kim
27:48
Speaker 1: Jong Nam's grandfather had imagined decades earlier. Kim Il sung
27:53
Speaker 1: had built up North Korea by riding on a deep
27:56
Speaker 1: resentment of the Japanese and a rising tide of nationalism.
28:01
Speaker 1: He painted his Korea as the real Korea. But what
28:05
Speaker 1: the North Korean regime did is they really emphasized Korean as.
28:09
Speaker 1: They said, we are going to actually be the legitimate
28:12
Speaker 1: Korean state. We are going to be the most Korean
28:14
Speaker 1: of the two Koreas. It helped that Kim Il sung
28:18
Speaker 1: was a bona fide folk hero Korean Davy Crockett. He
28:22
Speaker 1: was born in poverty, a humble church organist who bravely
28:27
Speaker 1: fought the Japanese and climbed the ranks to become one
28:29
Speaker 1: of the fiercest fighters in the rebellion. And the truth
28:33
Speaker 1: is it made Kim Il sung immediately popular. Better Yet, Kim,
28:39
Speaker 1: being a good communist, promised to give the oppressed Korean
28:43
Speaker 1: underclass land. At the time of his installment, low class
28:48
Speaker 1: peasants made up sev of North Korea's population. He gave
28:53
Speaker 1: them land in just three weeks. The reform was one
28:57
Speaker 1: of the most abrupt surges of upward mobility in human history,
29:02
Speaker 1: health care and schooling became free, and universal literacy practically vanished.
29:09
Speaker 1: A law upholding the quote triple subordination of women was repealed,
29:14
Speaker 1: allowing people to marry outside their traditional class. The centrally
29:18
Speaker 1: planned economy. It worked for quite a long period of
29:21
Speaker 1: time in North Korea. When the German American journalists Bernard
29:25
Speaker 1: Krisher visited North Korea, he was shocked to find well
29:29
Speaker 1: supported citizens living lives of happy simplicity. He described it
29:34
Speaker 1: as quote one big kibbutz. This is a period that
29:38
Speaker 1: was looked upon quite finally by many North Koreans because
29:41
Speaker 1: they had their three bowls of rice a day, and
29:44
Speaker 1: they had a roof to live under. After decades of
29:49
Speaker 1: oppression from a foreign power, many North Koreans had experienced
29:54
Speaker 1: a genuine uplift. The economy was roaring too. In um
30:00
Speaker 1: the nineteen sixties, you could say that North Korea's economic
30:04
Speaker 1: output was ahead of South Korea. North Korea's standard of
30:07
Speaker 1: living would beat South Korea and China for decades. North
30:12
Speaker 1: Korea's gross national product would continue to wallop South Korea
30:16
Speaker 1: until the country used twice as much energy per capita
30:21
Speaker 1: in the South. It's citizens even consumed more calories per
30:26
Speaker 1: day than those in the South. It helped that North
30:29
Speaker 1: Korea sat on a pile of natural resources gold, tungsten, iron,
30:34
Speaker 1: and anthra site It's heavy industry could build top of
30:38
Speaker 1: the line hydroelectric and manufacturing plants. If you could look
30:42
Speaker 1: past the cartoonish propaganda and psychotically sycophantic leader worship, North
30:48
Speaker 1: Korea looked like one of the fastest, growing, most advanced
30:52
Speaker 1: countries in East Asia. But Kim Il sung, so called screen,
30:56
Speaker 1: could only conceal so much a lot. This was also,
31:01
Speaker 1: you know, quite shallow in terms of North Korea's self
31:05
Speaker 1: reliance and Koreans because they were receiving huge amounts of
31:09
Speaker 1: developmental aid from the Soviet Union into a lesser extent, China.
31:13
Speaker 1: North Korea's success was bankrolled by two of the world's
31:17
Speaker 1: largest communist superpowers, and that created issues because in the
31:24
Speaker 1: late nineteen fifties, the USSR and China began quarreling about
31:28
Speaker 1: how to move communism forward. Kemel sung did not want
31:33
Speaker 1: to be stuck between the two. North Korea had a
31:36
Speaker 1: painful history of colonization, and he didn't want to be
31:40
Speaker 1: pushed around by anybody, so he made a decision. He
31:45
Speaker 1: laid out a new political philosophy, a hodgepodge of Marxism, Latinism, Confucianism, Stalinism,
31:52
Speaker 1: and nationalism that he believed would help North Korea maintain
31:56
Speaker 1: its independence. It was called to It's impossible to overstate
32:04
Speaker 1: just how important Toute was and is to North Korea's
32:08
Speaker 1: approach to well everything. Some say it's a really central
32:14
Speaker 1: to how North Korea orient itself in the world. It's
32:17
Speaker 1: also impossible to overstate how this ideology would cripple the country.
32:23
Speaker 1: Touche meant independence in all matters, political, economic, and cultural,
32:30
Speaker 1: and that meant North Korea wouldn't depend on Russia or
32:34
Speaker 1: China for protection. To Che compelled Chemio Sung to institute
32:40
Speaker 1: a military first policy, prompting the state to pour endless
32:45
Speaker 1: amounts of money into its military at the expense of
32:48
Speaker 1: every other institution. Funds that once bolstered the Workers Party
32:53
Speaker 1: social programs are feeding and housing people were redirected into defense.
33:00
Speaker 1: North Korea would eventually allocate an obscene of its GDP
33:05
Speaker 1: into its military. For comparison, the US bends three point
33:10
Speaker 1: seven percent. The regime began blowing funds on parades, palaces,
33:17
Speaker 1: and statues, and then Mr teared down this roar. The
33:28
Speaker 1: Berlin Wall fell, and so too did any financial support
33:34
Speaker 1: North Korea received from the Soviets, and North Korea got
33:38
Speaker 1: a taste of what self reliance was really like, and
33:42
Speaker 1: it didn't go down easily. Imports and exports dropped dramatically.
33:49
Speaker 1: The country's oil reserves plummeted, its ability to make steel
33:53
Speaker 1: practically vanished, the country's one strong chemical industry nearly collapsed,
34:00
Speaker 1: Factories closed, farmland laid to waste, and then when the
34:05
Speaker 1: rains came, any relics of communism were essentially destroyed. Socialism
34:11
Speaker 1: became more rhetoric and a slogan rather than the official practices.
34:15
Speaker 1: Underground black market started to spring up in North Korea.
34:20
Speaker 1: Years later, the government would remove any mention of communism
34:24
Speaker 1: from its constitution to check and military first became the
34:29
Speaker 1: new official guiding principles. And Kim Jong Nam was stuck
34:36
Speaker 1: in the middle of all of it. He was born
34:43
Speaker 1: during and had heard about North Korea's Golden Age, a
34:48
Speaker 1: time of growth and prosperity. But now in his twenties,
34:53
Speaker 1: just as he was allowed to explore beyond the walls
34:56
Speaker 1: of his palace prison, he was watching his country at
35:01
Speaker 1: its lowest point. He watched as North Korea starved to death,
35:07
Speaker 1: its industries crumbling, It's peaceful farming co ops breaking down.
35:14
Speaker 1: To Kim jong Nam, it was obvious the system was outdated, broken, defunct,
35:23
Speaker 1: and he couldn't stomach it. Kim jong Nam was tasked
35:27
Speaker 1: with punishing people who were desperately trying to flee the
35:30
Speaker 1: country in search of food. According to Michael Madden, the
35:36
Speaker 1: job required Kim jong Nam to hand pick people for execution.
35:42
Speaker 1: These people would be publicly executed and their families sent
35:46
Speaker 1: to labor and central political detention facilities, and so Kim
35:50
Speaker 1: jong Nam being a member of the family was a
35:52
Speaker 1: part of that. But that kind of ruthlessness, that kind
35:56
Speaker 1: of brutality just wasn't in Kim jong Nam's dn A.
36:01
Speaker 1: He did not. He just did not have the personality
36:04
Speaker 1: or temperament to do that kind of stuff. I think
36:07
Speaker 1: it kind of broke his heart. If he had political
36:10
Speaker 1: aspirations before, they just sort of surrendered. The kind of
36:13
Speaker 1: died with him having to go through that. But when
36:17
Speaker 1: Kim jong Nam looked around his own country, he saw
36:21
Speaker 1: leaders more interested in feeding his dad's personality cult than
36:26
Speaker 1: feeding the people. Kim jong nam knew things could be different.
36:33
Speaker 1: China had opened up its economy, so had Vietnam, and
36:37
Speaker 1: both were enjoying rapid growth. So Kim jong nam approached
36:42
Speaker 1: his father with a plan. Maybe it was time to
36:46
Speaker 1: reconsider che to reinspect the country's military first policy. Maybe
36:53
Speaker 1: it was time to open up North Korea. In other words,
37:00
Speaker 1: he was suggesting that his father lift the screen. It's
37:20
Speaker 1: unclear what exactly happened next. According to Hong Kong based weekly,
37:26
Speaker 1: Kim jong nam had been inspired by the reforms he
37:29
Speaker 1: had read about in other communist countries. At a forum,
37:34
Speaker 1: he spelled it out plainly. My father has asked me
37:37
Speaker 1: to reorganize the state economy somewhat. I think there's no
37:41
Speaker 1: other way to revive the economy than Chinese style reform
37:44
Speaker 1: and opening. We should first set up corporations and after
37:49
Speaker 1: that set up subsidiaries under them. If we bring about
37:53
Speaker 1: such development, would it not lead to capitalism. It's unclear
38:00
Speaker 1: how his father, Kim jong il, reacted to this suggestion,
38:05
Speaker 1: but it appears he responded coldly. Years later, Kim jong
38:10
Speaker 1: nam told a Japanese journalist, I grew further apart from
38:14
Speaker 1: my father because SCI insisted on reform and market opening
38:18
Speaker 1: and was eventually viewed with suspicion. In fact, Kim Jong
38:23
Speaker 1: ill began to regret sending his firstborn son to Switzerland.
38:28
Speaker 1: He believed it had contaminated Kim Jong Nam's mind. And
38:32
Speaker 1: when he felt that I turned into a capitalist after
38:35
Speaker 1: living abroad for years, he shortened the overseas education of
38:39
Speaker 1: my brothers and sister. And that raises new questions. Maybe
38:46
Speaker 1: Kim jong Nam wasn't passed over for the successorship because
38:49
Speaker 1: he was caught trying to go to an amusement park,
38:53
Speaker 1: or even because his close family had skipped town and
38:56
Speaker 1: spilled family secrets. Was he passed over and that because
39:00
Speaker 1: he wanted to open up the country. The basic fact
39:05
Speaker 1: is that if North Korea ever took Kim Jong Nam's
39:07
Speaker 1: advice to truly open up, regular North Koreans would see
39:12
Speaker 1: life outside their her make kingdom and realize just how
39:16
Speaker 1: oppressed they really are. If the Kim family ever dropped
39:21
Speaker 1: the screen, the Korean people would discover that they've been
39:24
Speaker 1: fed lies. The economy might rebound, but Kim Jong Il's
39:30
Speaker 1: head it would be on a pike. In that case,
39:36
Speaker 1: Kim Jong Nam didn't just have a bad idea. He
39:40
Speaker 1: was a threat to the stability of the entire regime.
39:44
Speaker 1: So father and son made an agreement. Told his father
39:49
Speaker 1: told him, look, if you can get married, find a
39:51
Speaker 1: wife here in North Korea, then you can leave the country.
39:55
Speaker 1: But when you leave the country, you're going to be
39:57
Speaker 1: loyal to me, and you're going to do favors for me.
40:02
Speaker 1: You're still going to work for me. Okay, and Kim
40:05
Speaker 1: jong Nam found a home in Macao, and and that's
40:10
Speaker 1: how Kim jong Nam ended up where he did in
40:12
Speaker 1: Macau with his family. It's because he made an agreement
40:16
Speaker 1: with his father. But that doesn't mean Kim jong nam
40:19
Speaker 1: was powerless. It seems that his father did take up
40:23
Speaker 1: some of his ideas. The country normalized relations with thirteen
40:28
Speaker 1: Western European countries. In two thousand one, Kim Jong il
40:32
Speaker 1: was quoted in a party newspaper apparently admitting that change
40:37
Speaker 1: was needed. Things are not what they used to be
40:41
Speaker 1: in the nineteen sixties, so no one should follow the
40:44
Speaker 1: way people used to do things in the past. More
40:47
Speaker 1: startling was in the fall of two thousand two, Kim
40:51
Speaker 1: Jong ille tried to court an office zone of northwest
40:54
Speaker 1: North Korea, near the border of China to establish an
40:58
Speaker 1: economic zone where in North Korean's could practice capitalism. Were
41:03
Speaker 1: those ideas coming from Kim Jong Nam? There's no way
41:07
Speaker 1: to tell, but evidence suggests that although the young Prince
41:11
Speaker 1: was no longer living at home, he wasn't living in
41:15
Speaker 1: exile either. The question is what was he doing next? Time?
41:29
Speaker 1: On Big Brother, Kim Jong Nam strikes up a friendship
41:32
Speaker 1: with an unlikely character, laying his cards on the table
41:38
Speaker 1: and his life on the line. Big Brother is a
41:46
Speaker 1: production of School of Humans and I Heart Radio and
41:50
Speaker 1: hosted by me even Le Lucas. Riley is our writer,
41:54
Speaker 1: co director and associate producer. Amelia Brock is our senior producer,
41:58
Speaker 1: co director and at A er. Executive producers are Virginia Prescott,
42:03
Speaker 1: Brandon Barr, Else Crowley, and Jason English. Our fact checker
42:07
Speaker 1: is Aaron Blakemore. Music composed by Jason Todd Shannon and
42:11
Speaker 1: Tune Weathers. Original score mixed by Vick Stafford, Audio editing
42:16
Speaker 1: by Jesse Nice Swanger Sound design and mixed by Harper W. Harris.
42:21
Speaker 1: Audio correction by Josh Fisher. Voice acting by Mark Chung,
42:26
Speaker 1: June Une, Mike Coscarelli, Daniel Kim, Sage, Kim Gray, Jennifer
42:32
Speaker 1: sun Bell, and Daniel's he Hung Kim. Special sound credit
42:36
Speaker 1: to Quama two of freesound dot org. Special thanks to
42:40
Speaker 1: Ryan Murdoch and Will Pearson. Sound license from the Ronald
42:44
Speaker 1: Reagan Presidential Library and freesound dot org. If you're enjoying
42:48
Speaker 1: the podcast, help us get the word out by leaving
42:51
Speaker 1: a rating in your favorite podcast app. Until next time,
42:55
Speaker 1: I'm Eden Lee. School of Humans