included classmates from the United States and South Korea. He liked basketball, especially watching Dennis Rodman, and would don a replica Rodman uniform when he played the game with his friends. Jong Chol enjoyed action movies, particularly those featuring the actor Jean-Claude Van Damme, whom the thin boy admired for his physique. He and his younger brother were not stellar students by any means, and like so many other boys in their teens were more interested in playing than studying. According to Thae Yong Ho, a high-ranking North Korean diplomat in London who defected to South Korea in 2016, Jong Chol was more interested in attending Eric Clapton concerts, partying, and shopping in London and elsewhere. Thae was in charge of escorting Jong Chol and revealed that the princeling was very polite and quite a talented guitar player.
Unlike the temperate, music-loving Jong Chol, Jong Un was competitive and tough. In 1996, when he was twelve, he joined his brother at the International School of Berne, where a classmate recalled that “his English was bad at first. He had a strong accent and was given extra lessons.” Jong Un studied German and English, and was reportedly good in math. But apparently because he was unable to succeed at the private school, according to one South Korean scholar, in 1998 he transferred to the less demanding Schule Liebefeld Steinhölzli, a German-language public school near Bern, where he studied until he returned to Pyongyang in early 2001 at age seventeen. Fujimoto described Jong Un’s mother as not being strict about her sons’ education and said that the two boys were never forced to study.
Jong Un’s friend and classmate Joao Micaelo, who knew him as “Un Pak,” the son of a North Korean diplomat, said years later, “We weren’t the dimmest kids in class but neither were we the cleverest. We were always in the second tier. Un tried hard to express himself but he was not very good at German and became flustered when asked to give the answers to a problem. The teachers would see him struggling ashamedly and then move on.” Jong Un was apparently unbothered by his less than stellar scores. “He left without getting any exam results at all. He was much more interested in football and basketball than lessons,” said Micaelo. Perhaps he just wasn’t interested in the school’s curriculum, which included coursework in Swiss history since 1291 and the evolution of democracy there, civil rights leaders Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela, and human rights. But the competitiveness he lacked in the classroom showed up in spades on the basketball court. “He was very explosive,” one friend said. “He could make things happen. He was the playmaker.” Another friend said Jong Un was tough and fast: “He hated to lose. Winning was very important.” He especially loved Michael Jordan. He would draw his picture over and over again, and harbored hopes that playing basketball would make him taller. Ra Jong-yil, a former senior South Korean intelligence official, supported this schoolmate’s impression, claiming that the Dear Leader had long preferred his youngest son because of his aggressiveness, which gave him the temperament to run a country.
A former teacher said that Jong Un was a “friendly, gentle, young Asian boy” who struggled to form close relationships with his peers because of the language barrier. One of the few pictures of Jong Un with his classmates at the public school shows him in the middle of the back row. While the other students have their arms wrapped around one another in a joyful embrace, leaning in toward the camera, mouths open in wide smiles and glee, Jong Un stands straight, with his arms at his side, directing a cautious look at the camera. Living under a pseudonym in Switzerland, he was not a North Korean “prince” but just the son of an embassy official, like many of the other kids. It must have been hard for the teenager, who had been raised in palatial mansions in Pyongyang, to do without the adulation and deference to which he had become accustomed.
“We lived in a normal house and acted like a normal family,” recalled his aunt Ko Yong Suk, who took care of the two boys in Switzerland. “I encouraged him to bring his friends home, because we wanted them to live a normal life. I made snacks for the kids. They ate cake and played with Legos.” If Jong Un needed to act a bit restrained at school