Kim Jong-il: School days of a tyrant
An exiled teacher of Kim Jong-il has revealed how he first met an 'ordinary' student who turned into the monster that rid Pyongyang of the disabled – and ordered his entire family killed.
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It seemed an ordinary moment, repeated in thousands of schools worldwide. On one side, a shy boy "with puffy, red cheeks" who stammered through a translation test in the principal's office. On the other, a tutor hired by the boy's father to put him through his paces.
But the school was in North Korea, the father was the country's legendary founder, Kim Il Sung, and the boy was his son and future leader, Kim Jong-il. And the relationship between student and tutor would climax in a horrific denouement: the boy grew up to order the execution of the teacher's entire family.
Those are among the milder allegations made by the tutor, Kim Hyun-sik, now 76 and a research professor at George Mason University in Virginia.
"So many times I've imagined killing him and then killing myself," he writes of his former student in a powerful new memoir in Foreign Policy magazine which pulls back the curtain on the Supreme Leader's background.
The piece, in one of the most influential US publications, is likely to fuel criticism of nuclear-equipped North Korea and embolden the US conservatives who demand military intervention there.
Read entire article at Independent
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It seemed an ordinary moment, repeated in thousands of schools worldwide. On one side, a shy boy "with puffy, red cheeks" who stammered through a translation test in the principal's office. On the other, a tutor hired by the boy's father to put him through his paces.
But the school was in North Korea, the father was the country's legendary founder, Kim Il Sung, and the boy was his son and future leader, Kim Jong-il. And the relationship between student and tutor would climax in a horrific denouement: the boy grew up to order the execution of the teacher's entire family.
Those are among the milder allegations made by the tutor, Kim Hyun-sik, now 76 and a research professor at George Mason University in Virginia.
"So many times I've imagined killing him and then killing myself," he writes of his former student in a powerful new memoir in Foreign Policy magazine which pulls back the curtain on the Supreme Leader's background.
The piece, in one of the most influential US publications, is likely to fuel criticism of nuclear-equipped North Korea and embolden the US conservatives who demand military intervention there.