Who is Kim Jung Un? Anna Fifield talks to Armstrong & Getty

over there, right right. And the book is the great successor the divinely perfect destiny of brilliant comrade Kim Jong Un. And A Fifield joins us. Now, Anna, this is a real pleasure. How are you? I'm great, Thank you. It's a pleasure from me too. Well, let me share this with you that I began prepping for this interview a couple of days ago, and my normal practice would be to jump here and there in the book, skim look

at chapter headings, that sort of thing. I did a miserable job at it because I started at the beginning and I just couldn't stop. It really is compelling and fascinating and and what a subject. If you don't mind, can we start in talking about Kim Jong un by talking about the Kim dynasty in general, and how you know, the descriptions of Um, all of the Kim's really have been that of gods of transcendent being sent from above, when the beginning of the Kim regime was actually very

very grubby, even by political standards. Yeah, that's right. So North Korea was created when some Americans drew a line across the Korean peninsula at the end of the Second World War, uh, and they decided to, you know, they would take control of the South back the South and the Soviet Union back to the North. And they installed as a leader there Kim Ill Song, who was a you know, supposedly, he says, he was a revolutionary anti Japanese fighter. He was somebody that the Soviets even had

some misgivings about at that time. But he did become the leader of North Korea. And he quickly, like said about, you know, out personality culting even Stalin and Mao Zadong in China. He created this whole system around him as if he was some kind of divine figure um chosen

to be the leader of North Korea. He created this personality cult where everybody is forced to um adore him all the time, and now he's he passed it down to his son, said Kim Jong il, who was the second generation leader of North Korea, making North Korea the world's first communist dynasty, and now he passed it on to Kim Jong in the third generation. But they all claim their legitimacy by tracing their line back to this holy mountain in the north of North Korea called Mount Pectu.

So so Grandpa invented this this government style that they that they still used. Now, do you have any idea why he worked with that? I mean that North Korea started as a Soviet client state, so so much of what they adopted came from the Soviet Union in terms of the communist party apparatus. Well, was he a communist? Yeah, he's a true blue communist ka, I mean he he

was a communist at the beginning. There he kind of blended communism with this North Korean nationalism and made North Koreans out to be better than all the other communists. But yeah, he he adhered to communism. But the thing is that his family has its background in Christianity. His grandfather was a Protestant minister North Korea. You know, Piongyang used to be called the Jerusalem of the East. So there had been this tradition of Christianity in this part

of the world. But then, you know, kim family wiped that out, made that illegal, and adopted many of the kind of stories of Christianity and bent them for their own purposes. So, for example, kim Ill Song, when they wrote the propaganda around his son, they said that he was born on this mountain and a bright star shone

in the sky at night, So very similar to the genius. Yeah, well so we'll go through these as we go along, I imagine, but him when the original grandfather started rational act or sane person Yeah, yeah, he was a rational actor because he proceeded very much according to a plan here where he you know, um did all the things he needed to do to stay in power, and that included bolstering the military, creating a strong communist party plaque, hating Stalin and Mao as much as he needed to,

but also yes, stealing from them many parts of the system, many parts of the personality cult. So yeah, he acted in a very rational way if you're a totalitarian dictator who wants to stay in power. And how long did kim Il Song stay in charge. Well, he took over and he died in so almost fifty years the leader of North Korea. His son ran it for seventeen years, and Kim Jong has now been in power for seven

and a half. So all together, North Korea has now existed for longer than the Soviet Union, which I read and thought, you know, if I was a cartoon rabbit, i'd have gone because I was astounded by that. But that's true. Let's let's take a moment on Kim Jong il, the second in line, partly because I'm an avid golfer, and he made eighteen consecutive holes in one, which is really an astounding achievement on his first game of golf. As well, I've played with beginners. That's very imp I

can see why you'd never play again. Boring, which which gets us to an aspect of um of the society. And this is a rather jarring turn from hilarious to fairly sickening. But those incredible claims of godliness those exist for a couple of different reason, am I correct? One of them being you don't dare dispute it, no matter

how ridiculous it is. Yeah, that's right. I mean, the the family claims the right to lead by saying that they are so special, they can do all these superhuman feats and North Korea is so lucky to have them. But increasingly, yeah, North Koreans know that this is all

made up, fantasy, impossible kind of stuff. But because the police state is so severe and so strict and the punishment is just unfathomable that people can't speak up and criticize the regime, you know, their lives literally depend on it. So what else should we know about Kim Jong UN's son or I'm sorry, his father, Kim Jong ill. I mean, he was a real kind of oddball. I mean he was very introverted, very reclusive, and seventeen years in power, he spoke in public only once, uh and that was

one single sentence that he uttered at a rally. So he was somebody who did not appear to enjoy the job at all. Whereas Kim Jong n is so different from that. He's very much like his grandfather. I mean part of that is by design. And like Kim Jong's haircut and his clothes and his glasses and his gravelly voice, all of that is copied from his grandfather. He looks a lot like his grandfather, and he does that as well to say, look, I am a reincarnation of this

great founder of our state. Um so. But Kim Jong Arn is also much more like his grandfather and personality he's you know, is much more outgoing. He seems to enjoy interacting with people even though they're forced to enjoy interacting with him. So so the middle Kim Kim Jong l he was very much the aberration in this system. And I mean it is a surprise, was he saying and or irrational actor? Yeah? I mean he still was because I mean the proof of that is that he

managed to stay in power. I mean, none of these people, well are good people or the kind of people you would want to live under at all, But yeah, they have acted in a way that is very rational. Like if he was a madman and going off killing too many people or not killing enough people or whatever, you know, that's the equation that they're making, he wouldn't have been able to do it. So yeah, all of them are very brutal and ruthless, but they're not not. Case, at

what point did the population start starving? And what's the theory behind that? I mean, what's the upside? Yeah, I mean there's no upside to the people of North Korea, that's for sure, or even to the leadership. Having your population starving to death, what's the goal there. Yeah, No, the leadership doesn't care about the population. I mean they have proven that time and time again. The leadership only cares about the elites that are the people who keep

them in power. Um. But the starvation that happened in the nine nineties, North Korea suffered this really devastating famine. I mean, partly it was because of natural there was a drought and there was to rend to rain, but all of this was able to have an impact because of the mismanagement North Korea had. You know, the agriculture

sector was totally broken. The leaders had mismanaged North Korea for so many decades that when this drought in this flood hit, it wiped out all of the crops and as many as two million people starved to death during that period, and those who survived, you know, emerged the skeletons from this. So there's a lot of tales from children at the time. You know, children would fight over a single kernel of corn that they found in a cow pat over who got to eat this they were

so desperately hungry. So it's astounding. I mean, the regime came as close as ever to collapse during that time, but they did manage to make it through. Surprisingly. Okay, I'm just trying to make sure I understand this because I know just from for ridden enough. That's that Stalin and Mao, while they starved people, they thought they were going to bring about a worker's paradise. That was their plan. It just doesn't work. So but are you saying the

Kim's they just don't care. Yeah, I mean they were not. Yeah, they did not care at that time. This this famine did not happen as part of any like the Great Leap Forward, and China was supposed to be this upgrading of the agriculture, of the farming sector. So I mean, yes, I was very misguided. But North Korea they weren't even trying to help them. Wow, they don't they don't care. They're just horrible at running an economy. Yeah, they really were.

So Listen, and before we get really into Kim Jong un, who's obviously the subject of the book, was that I've been reading We've been reading your stuff from the Korean Peninsula for quite a while now, but I hadn't realized that North Korea was such a passion of yours. And how much of your adult life has been spent studying and trying to understand the system and talking to people? Um? When did when did you really become intensely interested in it? Yeah?

Well when started in two thousand and four when I was sent to Seoul by the Financial Times, which is a APRI used to work for back then. Um, And I was sent to Korea, and I had unusual luck in getting into North Korea, mainly you know, I'm from New Zealand if you can tell by my funny accent, uh, and I worked for a British paper, so it wasn't as difficult for me as it was for an American

at that time. And it just became this fascination because it's such a puzzle like how has this regime managed to survive all this time despite all the changing outside world? And how have the people, you know, how do they tolerate it? Why do they not rise up and overthrow

this regime? You know, there's so many questions and so a few answers, And I think that's why it's kept me interested all these years well, and there it is side by side or top and bottom with certainly in the last thirty forty years one of the most technologically advanced modern countries in the world South Korea. Yeah, you could hardly hope for a better case study. But you know,

one country split into the other. One is this bustling, fast placed your high tech economy, and the other is like, yes, stuck in the Victorian era in many respects. So I realized this is silly. But I was thinking about this conversation overnight, and um, I'm picturing the scenes from The Lion King, the Great Disney Kids movie, where a lot of the interaction between the dad and the prince is dad humbling the prince and letting him know, you're going to be serving, you are not going to be served.

I got the idea from the book that Kim Jong un didn't exactly have that upbringing. He did not. He

had the exact opposite of that. So, I mean, he was unveiled as his father's successor on his eighth birthday, and he had this birthday party where you know, top officials were there, his aunt and his uncle were there, and a Japanese sushi chef who was working in the royal compound was also there, and so I talked to the aunt and the uncle and the sushi chef and they described how, you know, Kim jong un was even a little general's uniform with brass buttons and epaulets and everything,

and real generals who were at this birthday party started saluting him and bowing to him. And it was from you know, that day onwards that it was impossible for him to be a normal child in any respect, and he got used to giving orders, you know, far from serving. He got used to people serving him. Why on and not his older half brother. Yeah, this is a good question. So, I mean, it's commonly been thought that the older half brother fell out of favor in two thousand and one

when he was caught trying to sneak into Japan. He was trying to go to Disneyland in Tokyo and very embarrassingly got got busted at the airport. Um. But I think he had actually fallen out of favor before that. And the reason they think this is because of the influence of their mothers. So Kim jong nam, the oldest son of the third generation, his mother, you know, she moved to Moscow when the boy was three years old.

She was really out of the picture. She had a kind of mental breakdown, nervous breakdown, and she was not influential in the regime any longer, even though she never defected from it UM. Whereas Kim Jong UN's mother, she was really like the first lady. She was there in North Korea, very ambitious, very powerful, and she was positioning her sons to be the leaders from the get go.

So she had Kim Jong un called the Comrade General, and she made sure that they went to the west point of North Korea so they could claim to have the military credentials to lead this country. So I think it was really the mother that was a decisive factor. But you know, Kim Jong an has an older full

brother from the same mother. Um. I think that he was chosen even though he's the younger one, because he just had this natural aptitude and he showed some kind of innate ability to be able to do this job. So you broke the story. I guess that Young Kim's brother that he assassinated at the airport was working for the FBI or the CI. Yeah, that's right. So after Kim jong came into power. He kind of cut off this older brother who was living in exile, so he

wasn't getting money from the regime like he used to. Uh, and so I think it was for that reason that he started becoming an informant for the CIA, also I heard for the South Korean Intelligence Service, probably the Japanese as well. You know, he had this unique position where even though he had no relationship with his brother, he had a lot of contacts still with people at the top of the regime, and he could have provided very useful intelligence to the CIA about what was going on

in North Korea, you know. And the CIA would be grasping at anything they could get because the simple factors that there is like basically no human intelligence from inside North Korea. All right, let's let's talk about the brilliant comrade Kim Jong n If you were recommending him for a job or something, what would be your your thumbnail sketch of what kind of guy he is. I would not rement him for any job, but if I were, I mean, the common perception of him is that he's

this cartoon character, like Dr Evil style villain. Right, he looks like he's straight out of jan Well, he looks like a doey dope. He obviously isn't, but that's what he looks like. Yeah, that's what he looks like, right, And there has been a tendency to treat him as if he's a cartoon character. So the point I wanted to make in this book is that he is actually very He's proven to be very strategic and calculating and savvy.

And the way he's approached this job, the way he's approached the outside world, the way he's pursued nuclear weapons, like everything he's done, he's done has been designed to keep him in power. Whether it is you having his uncle and his half brother killed, or it is firing off missiles that can technically hit the United States. He's proceeded according to this plan. He's certainly succeeded in getting

the United States attention. Um. So the point I wanted to make and here is that he we should take him seriously, Like if we treat him as a joke, we're underestimating him. We're underestimating the threat that he poses to us in the outside world, but also the threat that he poses every single day to million people who live in North Korea. And you know, his victims on a daily basis, his victims. But but he doesn't see

it that way. So I'm always most amazed by the psychology of these people, even more than the politics and all the other things you can look at, is just how does anybody end up that way? So you're you're discussing the birthday party in the general's outfit, and he saw his dad and his grandpa. He is around that, but he was educated abroad. He seems some of the world. Doesn't he develop some human compassion at some point? I hear these stories about people starving and it hurts my heart.

Doesn't it bother him? How does it not bother them? Yeah? I mean apparently it doesn't bother him because he hasn't done anything about it. I mean, yeah, when he wasn't Switzerland, he went to school there and he learned about Nelson Mandela and about democracy and about religious tolerance and you know, how to be a good global citizen. But he clearly wasn't listening during those lessons or they made no mark

on him. I think for him, he justifies it to himself by saying, you know, this is what I need to do to stay in power. So there's brutality. You know, there's a hundred and twenty thousand people in North Korea, uh living in these basically concentration camps, doing hard labor almost no food that put there for questioning the regime that is their only crime. Um. So he has and he, Kim Jong n has continued to do this, this system

that he inherited from his father and grandfather. So he is showing no interest whatsoever and improving the um kind of social climate there for the people of North Korea because all he cares about the reason I say he doesn't care about the people of North Korea. He cares about staying in power. So if that's what he's got to do this they empower, he is apparently willing to

do it. Although he's improved the capital city. Based on your writing when you when you showed up after he'd been in powerful while you said it was just it was shocking how different it was. Yeah, it was, I mean, yes, So Pyongyang is the showcase capital where the elite lives. They are the people who keep them in power. They are the one percent of North Korea. So he does care about those people because those are his supporters. Those

are the people who keep him in his job. So he's made sure that they get richer and happier and fatter under him. So I mean now they're you know, literally fatter. Do you mean literally fatter? Yeah, some of them. Yeah, I mean not fat. Nobody's fat in North Korea apart from him. But you know they look healthier. They are clearly, you know, their diet has improved. They're getting what they need. You can see it in their faces and in their figures when you go to North Korea, We're not starving.

Is the new fat? That's amazing. Yeah, But I mean in in Pyongyang, if people have money, and increasingly they do have money, they can live a relatively good life, you know, probably better than they would live if they escape to Seoul and just when and became part of the So, I mean, some people now call Pyongyang pyeong Hatton because it does have that kind of New York City kind of feel. I mean, that's an exaggeration, but

it's it's the head on this idea. Yeah, there are skyscrapers and you can do a yoga class and buy a cappuccino. If you wow money that is mind blowing, and you go out with the countryside and people are you fighting to the death over a colonel of corner. That's incredible. People have no electricity, no running water, you know, they don't even have oxen to plow the fields. You know, it's really so deprived outside of this Pyonghattan area. Yeah.

You know, I've spent a lot of time trying to understand the mathematics of dictatorship and totalitarian regimes, and and I get it. It sure seems like, well, the one commonality between your your dictators we've discussed um is megalomania. And I wonder whether Kim Jong UN's papa, Kim Jong il kind of lack that he just realized he was He had the tiger by the tail and he had to survive and keep the regime alive. But then it strikes me that on is he's he's got the megalomania gene.

He believes himself to be, you know, a great great man. Yeah,

I mean he does. And I was interested in this and talked to some psychologists about it, and they said, there's like a kind of chemical impact of this, you know, like the whole the saying about power corrupts and absolute power corrupts, absolutely is based on this idea that you get a little kick of dopamine in your brain every time you exercise your power, and so there could actually be a chemical reaction happening in his brain that encourages

him to do this more and more. While we were just talking about the you know, the him and the the privilege, the way they're living there in the capital versus the countryside, maybe instead of talking about Mao and Stalin, it's better to go. You have a quote from Henry the Fifth at the beginning of your book, from Shakespeare, it's better to think of like your medieval kings having the big parties in the castle, and you get right outside of there and people are living like it's the

year five. Yeah, I mean there is a lot of similarities, yeah, between Shakespearean tragedies like this and you know the medicies of Italy and these kind of families that were full of kleptocrats and megalomaniacs and things. Yes, there's a lot of overlaps there. So listen, I know from your writing that you do have a human concern for the people of North Korea, as you've gotten no then at least to some extent, and recognize that they're human beings. Is

there any reason for optimism? Are there any modernizing trends or liberalization going on at all? Yeah? There is, and and Kim johnn is allowingness increasingly, like things have improved a lot for their elites who keep him in power, and now he's beginning to allow a little more economic opening. People are able to start their own businesses and produce things and trade and make their own money within limitations. And that's a big change in North Korea, you know,

a country that's technically communist and centrally planned. But he's proceeding very carefully with this because he knows this could be dangerous because when you open the country up to trade, you know, you also comes information, and it is happening in North Korea now. When traders bring clothes and solar panels and you know, rice and from China, they're also bringing little USB sticks or f D cards full of South Korean and Chinese action movies and soap operas and things.

So information is starting to flow into North Korea, and it's that that could be really dangerous for Kim Jong un because you know, some more people hear about the outside world. The more they realize that, yeah, he's not a brilliant comrade genius among geniuses, and they do not live in a socialist paradise. So I think he has to proceed very carefully to try to balance the economic change with you know, with without having any political change. So I'm confused by two things you said, and I

want to figure out how they match up. So if if all three Kims, including the current guy in charges, is a sane, rational actor and all they want to do is stay in power, then earlier said, we need to recognize how smart and dangerous this guy is. How dangerous can he be if he's smart and rational and wants to stay in power, because if he crosses the United States, it will be the end. Yeah, but he's made sure not to cross the United States, Right, This

is what I mean about being savvy about this. Yes, he's fired a lot of missiles that could technically hit the United States, but he fired them straight up into the air, so they came straight down again, Like he's not firing them at a trajectory where they could hit Guam or Hawaii or the West Coast or anywhere in

the United States. So he wants to show what he's got without crossing any of those red lines, because he knows that if he was to stick in nuclear war it on the top of one of these missiles and try to fire it anywhere near the United States, that that would provoke an overwhelming American response, that the American

military would go in there and just annihilate him. So he's doing enough to show that he's serious, incredible, and that he does have these weapons, but not so much that he you know, risks you know, a suicidal mission there. What's your take on the current iteration of US North Korean nuclear talks. Yeah, I mean it's unconventional, isn't it.

Like the way that that Donald Trump has acted and also the way that Kim John Learne has acted has been very different from the way it's happened in the past. But you know, I feel a little optimistic about this, um, partly because thirty years of doing the same thing with North Korea has not worked. It has not convinced the Kim regime to give up the nuclear weapons. So maybe it's time to try something different. You know, maybe they are right to have leader level talks and see if

they can make any kind of progress. UM. But having said that I am not optimistic about the nuclearization, Like, there's no way Kim Jon's going to give up his weapons. He's put so much effort and so much money into these weapons. He needs them for his security or he feels that he needs them to defend himself against any kind of attack. So I can't see him giving those up any time soon. But you know, maybe he will give up something along the way. Maybe the two sides

can set up a liaison office. Because remember there's no diplomatic relations between the two countries. It's a really big deal for them to talk at all about anything. So if they can set up an office where they can just be in regular contact and start to have a conversation, like then maybe they can make some progress further down the line. Like we're in the early stages. Has he

ever actually fed somebody to dogs? Because like a couple of the more well publicized murders, some murders that he's pulled off, the people showed up later alive that pop star singer showed up on TV like a couple of weeks ago, that he supported singer was there in Singapore when President Trump was there, and thinks, yeah, there's a lot of people who reportedly get killed off, only to

show up fine and dandy a few months later. But there are also a whole lot of people who have been executed by Kim jong n, including the defense minister who was accused of falling asleep in a meeting when Kim jongan was talking. That was one of his crimes. He was blown to pieces by an anti aircraft gun in North Korea. So there are these really horrific tales of the way people go. But but no, the uncle

was not savaged by a hundred hungry dogs. He was shot with a you know, at a firing range, at a normal old execution, not not the hundred hungry dogs. But people expect more and more lurid tales from North Korea. I think so when tabloid magazines make up these kind of tales, they do go viral. But you know, the reality of life in those Koreas so horrific, we don't need to make anything kidding well, the book is the great successor the divinely perfect destiny of brilliant Comrade Kim

Jong Un. I'm hoping for a similar title to my biography and uh Anna Fifield and I cannot tell you how much we enjoyed the conversation, and I hope we can do it again. Yeah, I'm so through to get it. Thank you so much for having me on. It's a pleasure.

Thank you. Okay, bye bye bye. The missing piece for me and all these studies is I don't have a hunger for power, so I don't I have a hunger for sex, I have a hunger for cheeseburgers, I have hunger for lots of things that I get, But I don't have the hunger for power, So I don't understand.

I just it's hard for me to like get an emotional understanding of why these people do the things they do it because I crave power now I Yeah, well that was what I was bringing up when we were talking about Kim Jong il Own's daddy, who plainly did not dig the job. I mean he dug porn, spoke one, I'm one sentence. He was the Clarence Thomas a career in the Korean dictators But thanks for coming. But yeah, oh and obviously really really grooves to the task. He

really enjoys it. How do you end up in Switzerland for a while and I watch TV and hang out with people and you think, you know, starving people is just not that nice. I don't understand how that doesn't seep into your you know, we've talked about it a little bit in terms of Hitler, his great man theory of history, that and and this is I mean, depending listen, I understand them how fraught this is morally speaking. But

the great men of history whose names we know. Some of them are from like prehistory, but we know their names. They killed a lot of people, a lot of people. And the theory among megalomaniac's is he just can't worry about that that is necessary to the task, or you know, it's often necessary and if it becomes necessary, you just gotta do it and don't be whining about it. You're not cut out to be a great man. So one looks at it. He says, look, we've got pretty limited resources.

We don't have enough to feed the hinterlands, the common people. There's just not enough resources. I've got to keep the elite together and supporting me, and we're great and we will lead to this country into a great you know, communists to whatever f um and you spend all day one or I wonder if that guy is gonna stick a knife in me. Yeah, I tell you what that's

I wish there was some way. I mean, you almost have to have somebody give up dictatorial power, like people give up drugs and then talk about, you know, begging on the street to get in. How miserable it was. I would love to hear Kim Jong won speak at length about with the calculation you have to make. I mean, for instance, our minister of agriculture, it was clear to me that he was taking bribes. But just explain how that works on a date date basis, How do you

how do you be dictator? That's gonna be incredibly stressful work, you would think, I mean a lot of them hang onto the job for a long time though. Yeah, how about that? The Kims have been in power longer than Soviet Union existed. How about that? How does hereditary fit in with communism? And they have to spin that a certain playing Well, yeah, that's why they combine communism with nationalism with a cult of personality. You know, have been the facts to fit the circumstances. But wow, what a

compelling book. I can't wait to dive back into it, and will it fall in my lifetime? I'd sure like to see because it's gonna end sometime. It can't keep going forever. I was thinking that same thing because Anna, and you know you read it, you understand she she is sickened by what the Korean people have to put up with, And I found myself wishing for her that she lives long enough to see, well a positive outcome. I mean, if it goes gets even worse, maybe she'd

be better off not seeing it. But you know what I mean, You just you want to know if that this can't go on, This cannot go on, and yet it has good stuff. The book is the great successor extra large