SPIEGEL: North Korea’s Mysterious New Leader

João Micaelo, 28, now a chef in Vienna, says that he sat next to Kim Jong Un in class, played basketball with him and was his friend. “Jong Un was a quiet boy” who wore Nike tennis shoes and Adidas track suits, and was driven around by a chauffeur, Micaelo told the Swiss magazine L’illustré.

One day, says Micaelo, Jong Un showed him a photo and said: “This is my father. He is the president of North Korea.” But Micaelo didn’t believe him. Jong Un’s English was reportedly very good, and the young son of the North Korean dictator was also enthusiastic about pop culture, drew comics and watched martial arts films starring Jean-Claude Van Damme.

A First Glimpse of Future Leader
These details were kept from the unsuspecting population in North Korea, which only became aware of Jong Un about three years ago. Students in North Korean schools gradually began singing a previously unknown song: “Stomp, stomp, stomp in the footsteps of our General Kim.” Kim Jong Il had it composed for his son’s ninth birthday, says Kenji Fujimoto, the former dictator’s Japanese sushi chef. According to Fujimoto, the father had recognized some of his own traits in the strong-willed Jong Un.

The picture that the chef paints of the future leader of North Korea is also very Western. Fujimoto says that Jong Un often bummed cigarettes from him (he smokes the Yves Saint Laurent brand), drank a lot of vodka and was concerned about North Korea’s backwardness. “Our country is technologically behind the rest of Asia,” Jong Un allegedly said on a train journey from Wonsan in the southeast to Pyongyang. “All that we can be proud of are our uranium deposits.”

Last year, it became increasingly apparent that Jong Un would be appointed to succeed his father. On Jan. 8, 2010, his birthday was declared a national holiday, and in December he was made a four-star general and was accepted into the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party. That was when North Koreans got their first glimpse of their future ruler.

Nevertheless, Jong Un’s political autonomy was and remains limited. His father’s sister Kim Kyung Hee, 65, and her husband Chang Song Taek, 65, have become Jong Un’s advisors. Chang is the deputy chairman of the National Defense Commission and director of the government development bank. His wife Kim was made a four-star general in September. Both are seen as strong, power-conscious figures within the system. Jong Un will depend on their advice, and possibly their decisions, as well.

Not even 30 years old, the “Great Successor” is the new leader of a country with 24 million people and some natural resources, but one that can only survive economically with the help of its powerful neighbor, China. Malnourishment and hunger prevail in large parts of North Korea. The food supply is in terrible shape, and the power supply is even worse than it was last year. Someone walking through the streets of the capital at night will see large sections plunged into complete darkness. Heating systems are often not working, because there isn’t enough pressure to pump the water to the upper floors of buildings.

Nowhere is the dreariness of Kim’s realm more jarringly on display than in the region along the Chinese border in the country’s north. In the border city of Tumen, the eponymous river divides two worlds. Life on the Chinese side is colorful and loud, filled with the sounds of honking horns and music booming from loudspeakers, while tourists take pictures of each other on the streets. At nightfall, the North Korean side descends into cold and darkness and not a sound is to be heard from the squalid huts.

Jong Un is absolutely interested in better relations with the United States, says his father’s former chef, Kenji Fujimoto.
Communist leaders who have spent at least part of their childhood in the West tend to exhibit more openness, says former US State Department spokesman James Rubin.