Pak Un enrolled at a state school in Liebefeld, Switzerland, back in 1997 and seemed like just another new boy. The class was told that he was the son of an Asian ambassador posted to the nearby Swiss capital, Berne. More than a decade later, Pak Un — real name Kim Jong-un — is expected to be anointed as the leader-in-waiting of North Korea.
Unbeknown to the students at the Liebefeld school, their classmate was the youngest son of Kim Jong-il, the Supreme Leader who took over from his own father, Kim Il-sung, in 1994. Now, as the only hereditary dynasty in communist history is poised to transfer power again, Kim Jong-un is tipped to be named heir apparent at a general conference of North Korea’s Workers’ Party.
Still only 27, the gangling youngster will shoulder a fearful, apocalyptic legacy. As well as the power of an absolute ruler, he will assume control of the nuclear button that is primed to launch missiles at the republic’s historic enemy, South Korea.
Jong-un spent nearly four years at Hessgut Schule, a state-run, German-speaking establishment without even his teachers being any the wiser as to his real identity. The only odd thing they noticed was that on parents’ days, it was always an embassy official who would turn up for briefings on his progress.
“Back then I’d never really heard of North Korea, so I never thought anything of it,” Joao Micaelo, the son of a Portuguese immigrant couple whom Jong-un sat next to on his first day in class, who is now a chef, told The Sunday Telegraph recently. Joao and Jong-un were close friends.
At Jong-un’s apartment at the embassy’s living quarters on a quiet Liebefeld street with two pizza joints, the pair would also pass time with computer games and movies. Jong-un’s favourites were Jackie Chan and James Bond films.
On the one occasion that Jong-un did confide to his young friend about who his father was, Joao dismissed it as adolescent fantasy. “One day, he did actually say to me, ‘My father is the leader of North Korea’, but I just thought he was making it up. A few days later, he showed me a photo of him with this guy who I now realise was Kim Jong-il. But I knew his father was a diplomat, so I thought it was just some photo from a government event they had attended. Otherwise, he hardly ever talked about his home life, although he did play the North Korean music a lot, in particular the national anthem.”
That ditty is likely to be blasting out again on Tuesday, when thousands of party cadres meet in the North Korea’s capital, Pyongyang.
Such is the level of paranoia in the ruling elite that his name has never been officially mentioned as a potential successor. But state-sanctioned poems and songs have been released, praising without name “the young general” and dwelling on the importance of “footsteps” — a metaphor for the familial transfer of power.
So secretive are the machinations in Pyongyang that many analysts believe Kim Jong-un’s new role will not even be formally announced at the meeting. Kongdan Oh, a North Korea specialist at the Institute of Defence Analyses, predicted that the most likely post for the “hidden crown prince” is deputy director of the Orwellian-sounding Bureau of Organisation and Movement. This is the party’s most powerful department — “responsible for hiring, firing, purging and executing”, she said.
Kongdan emphasised the significance of Kim Jong-il’s recent trip “down family lane” to his father’s wartime base in China. “He clearly wants to protect the family legacy and he feels he can only trust his son to do that,” she said.
But rare signs of public discontent are emerging from North Korea over news of the likely dynastic succession. Recent defectors and exiled media organisations describe growing dismay and alarm within the Workers’ Party and security forces as the name of Kim Jong-un has been gradually rolled out. The reports are fuelling fears that the country and its nuclear arsenal will be engulfed by a dangerous power struggle by rival regime factions, some of whom want to introduce Chinese-style political reforms.
His friends retain sympathy for Jong-un, whose spell in their company may be among his few carefree years. Even then, he lived a restricted life compared to his peers, never going out at night and missing out on parties.
“I was amazed when I heard he would become the next leader,” said Joao, who hopes to catch his friend’s coronation on the news. “But his time in our school was probably an important one for him, and hopefully he learned many things. I think he will be a bit cooler than his father.”
The Daily Telegraph
