big pond in the milieu of a triumphant post–Cold War Europe, shy, quiet, hiding his real identity, he was a big fish in a tiny pond in North Korea. Teams of teachers, tutors, cooks, assigned playmates, bodyguards, relatives, and chauffeurs had developed Kim’s sense of entitlement and tried to shield him from the realities of North Korea and the world even beyond his childhood years. But there were signs that the teenage Kim could not unsee what he had witnessed and learned in Europe.
In the mid- to late 1990s, the West was in a celebratory mood. After five decades of the Cold War, in which the United States and the Soviet Union had locked horns in an ideological confrontation, the West rejoiced in the collapse of the Soviet Union, seeing the event as a victory for liberal democracy and capitalism. The American political scientist Francis Fukuyama famously declared “the end of history.” The United States and Vietnam, where a hot war had punctuated the era of cold peace, normalized ties in 1995, a reconciliation that seemed to demonstrate to most observers that the world would now be marked by peaceful coexistence, with Washington as the global leader. Indeed, armed conflict decreased dramatically in the period between 1992 and 2003, and champions of globalization believed that mankind was on a linear path of progress with Western-style governance and economic models leading the way in knitting together the international community. Time and history did not seem to be on the side of North Korea, the last bastion of Communism, isolationism, and its particular brand of Korean ethnocentrism based on the personality cult of Kim Il Sung.
It was during this period, during his summer vacation in August 2000, when Kim Jong Un was beginning his new life in Pyongyang, that he had a conversation with the sushi chef Fujimoto, which demonstrates that he clearly took note of the contrast between his home country and his travels and studies abroad. According to Fujimoto, Jong Un said, “Why are goods so insufficient and rare in DPRK’s department stores and regular stores, in contrast to those in Western countries?” He also inquired about the fate of average North Koreans: “How are our people managing their lives?” Jong Un admitted to Fujimoto that he admired the economic success of China and Japan: “I heard from my father that China is doing very well in many fields, including industry, commerce, hotels, and agriculture,” he said, and marveled at Japan’s prosperity after being defeated in World War II.
None of Jong Un’s reported utterances to Fujimoto indicate a questioning of the fundamentals of the North Korean model or criticism of the personality cults and regime ideologies. Jong Un was already thoroughly indoctrinated with the belief that he was destined to lead, so he was unlikely to conceive of a path for North Korea without a Kim at the helm. Nevertheless, these statements offer a glimpse into the young prince’s naïveté about the roots of North Korea’s problems: a centralized command economy and a caste system that stifled innovation and market activity, a gulag system that punished not only the accused but also their families, and the diversion of scarce resources to fund its military and nuclear weapons program at the expense of its citizens’ lives.
Fujimoto claims that Jong Il had chosen his youngest son to succeed him as early as 1992. He cited as evidence the scene at Jong Un’s eighth birthday banquet where Jong Il instructed the band to play “Footsteps” and dedicated the song to his son: Following our General Kim’s footsteps; Spreading the spirit of February [a reference to Kim Jong Il, who was born in February]; We, the people, march forward to a bright future. Not just the lyrics, but the deliberateness with which the proud father timed and presented the song suggested to the attendees that the Dear Leader was signaling that Jong Un would lead North Korea into the future, guided by his spirit and legacy. In fact, Kim Jong Il was circumspect about who would succeed him, maintaining ambiguity to limit palace intrigue, to stifle the emergence of coalitions around any particular son or family branch, and to protect himself from other challengers while he consolidated and reinforced his own power.
In any case, whether by the process of elimination or because young Jong Un began to show positive signs for leadership, by 2009, it was becoming clear that the third son had been tapped to lead.