Pictures of North Korea that the Western media don't want you to see

[chobolan]

The angmoh propaganda machine only want you to know the ugly and never the beautiful sides of North Korea

Hi RonRon, long time no see. The late Kim Jong Il doesn't want his people to know his actual origin.

According to North Korean lore, Kim Jong-il's birth was foretold by a swallow and heralded by a glorious double rainbow and the appearance of a new star.
His official biography says he was born on White-Headed Mountain, the highest peak on the Korean peninsula.
On top of the mountain sits the volcanic Heaven Lake.​

However, a set of grey and prosaic Soviet Union records say Kim was born in 1941 in the remote Siberian fishing village of Vyatskoye,
where his father was commanding a scraggly army battalion made up of Chinese and Korean exile. Picture: AP​

​

 

[chobolan]

Rare photos of Kim Jong-il's youngest son, Kim Jong-un, released

Rare photos have emerged of Kim Jong-un, the youngest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il who seems certain to inherit power in the communist state's second dynastic succession.

By Peter Foster in Beijing
Published: 10:46AM BST 08 Jun 2010

According to Yonhap News Agency the photo was obtained from an international school in Berne, Switzerland, and taken during Jong-un's school days Photo: EPA

Kim Jong-un

Last month a Japanese newspaper published a picture it claimed was Kim Jong-un (let) with his father Photo: EPA

Larking about with classmates and making playful V-signs for the camera, the boy who is now tipped to be the next leader of the hermit dictatorship of North Korea appears not to have a care in the world. These photographs purportedly of Kim Jong-un, the reclusive third son of North Korea's "Dear Leader" Kim Jong-il, were released on Tuesday by South Korea's national Yonhap news agency, providing a unique glimpse into the privileged life of the country's elite.

Taken between 1996 and 2001, while Kim junior was a teenager studying at international school in Bern, Switzerland, the pictures show a grinning Kim at ease with his friends at a time when his countrymen were suffering a man-made famine that killed up to 2 million people. Until now, the only verified picture of Kim Jong-un was a grainy black-and-white snapshot of him as an 11-year-old.

Last month a Japanese newspaper has published an unverified photo of a man it claimed was the elusive heir-apparent pictured as an adult. The pictures, which have not yet been verified by South Korea's National Intelligence Service, could provide another small piece in the puzzle that is Kim Jong-un, who has been kept out of the spotlight despite being groomed for the succession. On Monday, analysts said Kim Jong-un had taken a step closer to power after his uncle, Jang Song-thaek, was promoted to the North's all-powerful National Defence Commission in anticipation of his role as "regent" to the politically inexperienced 27-year-old.

Reports on Kim Jnr's earlier life, pieced together from the recollections of former classmates, say that he was enrolled at two Bern schools as a child of a North Korean embassy employee using the assumed name "Pak-un". He is said to be able to speak good English, as well as French and German and to enjoy the privileges of his birth, on one occasion chauffeuring a school friend to Paris to watch an NBA basketball game. "We were just playing basketball -- now he is going to be a dictator," one friend from his boarding school days told The Washington Post. "I hope he is a good leader, but dictators are usually not that good."

After leaving school in 2001, Kim is believed to have been enrolled in a military academy in Pyongyang in preparation for his designated future role that would see him follow in the footsteps of his father and grandfather, Kim Il-sung, as the absolute ruler of North Korea. More recently, he has been described in reports as overweight, diabetic, and possibly prone to health conditions in the wake of a car accident. Some first-hand insight into the character of Kim Jnr has comes from Kenji Fujimoto, a Japanese sushi chef who worked for Kim Jong-il and described the then young Kim as a "chip off the old block" - a calculating young man who always sought to be in control.

In his memoirs, Mr Fujimoto said it was apparent from an early age that Kim Jong-un would succeed his father, usurping his two older brothers, Jong-chul, who was rejected as weak and "girlish" and Kim Jong-nam, who fell out with his father because of his gambling habit and "wayward lifestyle". "Jong-un will be his father's successor. Everyone used to say it. He looked and acted just like him", the chef wrote, admitting he only dared refer to the young Kim as "Prince". "When he shook hands with me, he stared at me with a vicious look. I cannot forget the look in the Prince's eyes. It's as if he was thinking: This guy is a despicable Japanese'."

 

[laksaboy]

These are usually family members of the North Korean military and elites, and they all live in Pyongyang.

Everyone else in the rural areas are starving.

If Singapore were a much larger country, a similar arrangement would have been done.

 

[scroobal]

You can see the innocence in their faces. They have no idea how much the World has progressed. A pariah state because of one man, his son and now his grandson. The World seems helpless and lost on how to help them. They made an attempt in the 1950s and China stopped them. Now we have mainland Chinese all over the world, many have migrated, the sons and daughters of the Chinese politburo are in Western capitals having the time of lives while their Southern neighbours are lost to the World.

 

[dredd]

Kim Jong Un looks a prime candidate for another heart attack or stroke statistic.

 

[laksaboy]

Kim Jong Un looks a prime candidate for another heart attack or stroke statistic.

I have seen some fatties like him obtain IPPT gold.