Kim Jong-un
News stories about North Korea are very rare, but there’s one which has been making the rounds for about a month now. Ever since Kim Jong-il’s stroke in 2008 (or at least it is thought he had one, but we are unlikely to ever get official confirmation on that), speculation about who his successor would be has been rife.
In September this year, the first ever official photo of Kim Jong-un, Kim Jong-il’s youngest son, was published in North Korea. This was then followed by more public appearances, including one at a huge military parade to which international journalists were invited. Analysts have taken this as a clear sign that it is Kim Jong-un who is being groomed to succeed North Korea’s current dictator.
As murky as all this news is, I’ve been following it with a lot of interest. Here are three clips that particularly grabbed my attention:
- Melissa Chan speaking from Pyongyang via Skype - this is quite an event in itself. North Korea has never allowed so many international journalists such free access to the internet apparently.
- A report about a boy who used to go to school with Kim Jong-un. It seems that until he was 13, Kim Jong-un went to school in Bern, Switzerland.
- David Letterman’s Kim Jong Un Top Ten - I’m very impressed that he is covering North Korea at all (it’s not his first North Korean Top Ten either!). I don’t think many journalists in the US do, so it’s great to hear that somebody with so much influence does, even if it’s purely in a tongue in cheek way.
