- Getting a good picture of everybody.
So we look nice and handsome, thin.
- [Lady] Beautiful.
- [Aisha Tyler] That is Kim Jong-un
as described by his good friend,
President Trump.
His life has largely been shrouded in secrecy.
We do know he has a deep love for the 90s Chicago Bulls
and a reputation for becoming unhinged to put it mildly.
So who is Kim Jong-un?
Well, I'm Aisha Tyler
and this is the story of the North Korean Supreme Leader.
Kim Jong-un was born in 1982
or 1983
or 1984.
No one exactly knows the year,
but thanks to his good friend, Dennis Rodman,
who sang to him.
We do know he was born on January 8th.
- Happy Birthday to you.
- [Aisha Tyler] His parents were dancer Ko Yong-hui
and North Korean dictator, Kim Jong-il.
Kim Jong-un's grandfather, Kim Il-sung
was the founder of North Korea.
The country was created post-World War two.
After Japan surrendered and the United States
and the Soviet union divided control of the Peninsula.
Tensions grew between
the Soviet allied socialist dictatorship
in the North led by Kim Il-sung
and the American allied capitalist
controlled South led by Syngman Rhee.
The North invaded the South and the Korean war began.
U.S President Truman ordered American troops
to fight with South Korea.
In the ensuing three-year war,
Korea, North and South was decimated.
United States-supplied napalm poured
over the Korean Peninsula
and 4 million lives were lost.
A truce was signed in 1953,
leaving the borders of the North
and the South left largely unchanged,
except for the addition of a heavily guarded
demilitarized zone running across their shared border,
in the middle of the Peninsula.
Eventually Sung's tack transitioned
from Stalinism to Kim Il-sungism.
Sung erected statues and billboards of himself.
Citizens were grouped into a class system.
Entitled Songbun that determined every part of their lives,
where they worked, where they lived, who they married.
In the 80s, the South's economy boomed
and the North's stagnated.
And when the USSR dissolved in 1991,
so did their economic aid to North Korea,
setting the country into a tailspin with famine.
Kim Il-sung died of a heart attack
and left the starving country to his son, Kim Jong-Il.
One estimate says that between 1995 and 1998,
up to 2.4 million people starved to death at North Korea.
While Kim Jong-Il was running a starving nation,
his very well-fed son and soon to be ruler of the country
was going to school in Switzerland
at a small public school in Bern,
under the alias Pak Un.
He'd arrive every day in a chauffer-driven car
which no one seemed to pay any mind
after all to everyone he was nothing more
than a diplomat's son.
Not the dictator's child that he actually was.
A classmate recalled Kim acting out.
Quote, "He kicked us in the shins
"and even spat at us."
Another classmate described him as an introvert
and a super competitive basketball player
who like everyone else in the world at the time
was a big Michael Jordan fan.
- What do you actually talk about with...
And I don't mean this insultingly,
a madman murderous dictator?
- [Crowd] (laughs) (laughs)
- Actually we talk about basketball.
- [Aisha Tyler] On the court,
Kim was no stranger to pulling off a great fit.
His teacher in Switzerland expanded.
- He always looked like a pro in his NBA clothes.
Also the Nike's, the good ones.
The Airmax.
- [Aisha Tyler] While at the Swiss school political notes,
his lessons included human rights, women's rights
and the development of democracy.
One unit was even called happiness,
suffering life and death.
Students learned about Martin Luther King Jr,
Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi.
There was a strong emphasis on cultural diversity,
religious, ethnic, and social groups.
The rights of human beings
and standing in solidarity with the disadvantaged.
But it wasn't long before he would reject it all.
Kim Jong-un went back to North Korea
where he attended Kim Il-sung Military University.
And after his father died of a heart attack in 2011,
Kim Jong-un took the reins.
And the next time his classmates saw him,
he was ruling a country.
- The jury is out on Kim Jong-un.
That he is young, untested, inexperienced
and has quote, "Shown proclivities towards violence."
- [Aisha Tyler] Upon taking over,
Kim had top rival officials executed,
including his own uncle after he suspected a possible coup.
One top official was executed in front of a firing squad
for allegedly showing disrespectful posture in a meeting.
One general who fell asleep at a meeting
was executed by an anti-aircraft gun.
It's also widely believed that Kim Jong-un
fatally poisoned his half-brother Kim Jong-nam
at the Kuala Lumpur Airport in Malaysia.
Two women approached him
and rubbed a nerve agent on his face
and he collapsed minutes later.
In Kim Jong-un's first six years,
he reportedly executed 340 people,
including at least 70 Korean officials.
- They executed by 50 caliber ZBU four
anti-aircraft machine gun battery.
The bodies are pulverized.
There is nothing left behind.
- [Aisha Tyler] Under Kim Jong-un's rule,
human rights abuses have continued to plague the country.
A 2014 United Nations report,
which examined North Korea
found atrocities committed throughout the country,
including but not limited to
extermination, murder, enslavement,
torture, imprisonment, rape, forced abortions
and other sexual violence, persecution on political,
religious, racial, and gender grounds,
the forcible transfer of populations,
the enforced disappearance of persons
and the inhumane act
of knowingly causing prolonged starvation.
To keep it citizens in line,
the government uses surveillance, coercion, fear
and punishment to prevent any dissent.
It also restricts every form of basic civil liberty
like freedom of expression, religion, thought,
assembly, opinion, and information.
If you wanna own a computer,
you need to get permission from the government first.
And even then only government approved content is available.
If you violate any of the rules,
you may be sent to a labor camp or face execution.
Perhaps one of the country's most inhumane laws
is the three generations rule,
which was established in 1972
by Kim's grandfather, Kim Il-sung.
Any serious crime warrants, punishment.
Not just for the person who committed the crime,
but for three generations of their family as well.
Kim Il-sung said that this was the only way
to wipe out the quote, "Seed of class enemies."
Crimes to warrant such a brutal reaction
allegedly include failing to wipe dust
off of portraits of members of the Kim dynasty.
Kim Jong-un's regime continues to put people
in political prison camps without trial.
In 2014, up to 120,000 incarcerated people
were in the country's prisons,
where many are starved, forced to work, tortured or raped.
But in 2017, back in America,
former game show host, Donald J. Trump took the White House.
North Korea conducted a series of bold missile tests
with both ballistic and nuclear weapons,
which was followed by a frightening exchange of rhetoric
between Trump and Kim.
- No one has shown more contempt
for other nations and for the wellbeing of their own people
than the depraved regime in North Korea.
They will be met with fire and fury
like the world has never seen.
Rocket-man is on a suicide mission for himself.
- [Aisha Tyler] Kim Jong-un fired back.
- (speaking Korean)
(suspenseful music)
- [News Anchor] From North Korea,
a unique threaten from Kim Jong-un
a first message in English.
Vowing to make President Trump quote, "Pay dearly."
Calling him a mentally deranged dotard.
- [Aisha Tyler] But a year later at a summit in Singapore,
Trump met with Kim Jong-un,
which was the first time ever,
that a sitting United States President
met with a North Korean leader.
It's unclear if the meeting was set up at least in part
for Trump to get recommendations for statute sculptors.
The two leaders reaffirmed that agreement
to denuclearize the Korean Peninsula.
- I was really being tough and so was he,
and we'd go back and forth,
and then we fell in love.
- [Aisha Tyler] But this may have been
a one sided love story
because according to the UN, North Korea
did not haul it's illicit nuclear
and ballistic missile programs,
which it continued to enhance
in violation of Security Council resolutions.
In fact, just a month after the summit,
North Korea launched two short-range missiles.
Trump was duped.
Fast forward to 2020
and Trump and Kim Jong-un's bromance
was initially believed to have come to an end
after reports surfaced claiming Kim Jong-un had passed away
from a botched heart surgery.
However weeks later, video footage surface
of the chain smoking Supreme leaders
strolling down the street,
sucking on what was likely
an Yves Saint Laurent cigarette at an event.
Trump was overjoyed to see him alive tweeting,
"I for one, am glad to see he is back and well!"
Exclamation point.
Now Trump can finally get back to being duped.
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