The Secret History of Kim Jong Il

Few people have the chance to watch a shy young man grow into a ruthless dictator -- and live to talk about it. But, for one North Korean professor, Kim Jong Il is much more than the man holding his country hostage. He's a former student.

BY KIM HYUN SIK | AUGUST 12, 2008

I first met Kim Jong Il in October 1959. He was a senior at the elite Namsan Senior High School, and I was a 27-year-old professor of Russian at the Pyongyang University of Education. I also happened to have been chosen as a private tutor for the family of North Korean President Kim Il Sung. One day, the Great Leader remarked that he found his son's Russian to be very poor and told me to go to his school and evaluate both Kim Jong Il's proficiency and the quality of Russian education there. Handpicked by Joseph Stalin to rule over North Korea and a fluent Russian speaker himself, Kim Il Sung deemed study of the language essential to relations with the Soviet Union, North Korea's biggest political, economic, and military patron. At the school, I attended every Russian class, made evaluations, and then summoned the 17-year-old Kim Jong Il into the principal's office. The principal, one of the school's Russian teachers, and I, in accordance with Kim Il Sung's orders, jointly administered an oral Russian exam for Kim Jong Il.

Just a young student at the time, the examinee appeared to be extremely nervous sitting alone for an oral exam before the three of us -- especially one arranged at his father's behest. The shy boy with puffy, red cheeks responded meekly to each question I posed.

"Please open the book, Ri Su Bok, the North Korean Matrosov, and translate it," I told Kim.

He proceeded to read passages slowly from the book and translate them into Korean. His translations were not outstanding, but he managed to read and translate the text without making an error.

After a while I said, "Please summarize the contents of the book."

"You mean in Korean?" Kim asked.

"No. It should be in Russian, of course," I replied.

Looking a bit flustered, he began to speak in halting Russian. His spoken Russian seemed to lag behind his reading and translation.

"OK. Next I will test you on noun/adjective inflection, verb tense, and the first/second/third-person form."

When his father ordered me to evaluate Kim's Russian, he had praised his son's grammatical skills. He was right. When I rapidly threw out words at him, he replied without the slightest hesitation.

 

Kim Hyun Sik is research professor at George Mason University. For 38 years, he served as a professor of Russian at the Pyongyang University of Education. His memoir, A 21st Century Ideological Nomad (Seoul: Kimyoungsa), upon which this article is based, was published in South Korea in 2007. This article was translated by Sung-Yoon Lee, who teaches international politics at Tufts University's Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

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January/February 2010