Sunday Times 2
The secrets behind Kim Jong-un’s madness
In a remarkable interview a North Korean defector has revealed details about assassination attempts on the country’s former leader and plots to overthrow him that help explain the dangerous paranoia that engulfs his son’s regime.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un watches the military parade marking the anniversary of the birth of Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang (Reuters)
What makes the revelations so extraordinary is that they’ve come from a highly credible source – a former intelligence officer now living in South Korea.
Plots to kill Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, who ruled North Korea from 1994 to December 2011, have involved a lone gunman, a 20-tonne truck and even missile strikes, he said.
The defector, who gave his name only as ‘Mr K’, said that in one assassination attempt a lone gunman plotted to murder Jong-il with machine gun fire, but he was arrested before he could carry out the attack.
Another attempt came a bit closer to succeeding. Mr K said that Jong-il’s motorcade was rammed by a 20-tonne lorry, but the driver was fooled by Jong-il’s tactic of deploying decoy cars and he struck the wrong limousine.
Mr K also revealed details about two attempted coups. Both were plotted by members of the Korean People’s Army that had been trained at Moscow’s Frunze military academy and established strong links with Russia, according to The Daily Telegraph.
Both involved officers taking full advantage of military equipment at their disposal.
Watchful: Kim Jong-Un pictured during an inspection of North Korean Navy units in 2013 (AFP)
One group of officers wanted to blow up the Russian consulate in the city of Chongjin in the hope that the attack would prompt military action against North Korea by Russia.
Another was even more audacious – multiple missile strikes on Pyongyang.
Both plots were uncovered before they had a chance of being put into action.
The North Korean regime is so secretive that it’s extremely difficult to verify Mr K’s revelations.
However, two incidents do back-up his claims.
The late Kim Jong-il, right, and his son Kim Jong-un (AFP)
In 1994 officers who had studied in Russia were arrested in what was known as the ‘Frunze Affair’ and in 1997 a firefight erupted at the headquarters of the North Korean Army’s Sixth Corps when soldiers stormed it to make arrests.
The latter incident has never been fully explained.
Mr K, who defected in 2005, went on to describe in his briefing to journalists the extraordinary paranoia of Kim Jong-un.
He said that even family members are patted down before meeting the dictator, who is constantly surrounded by multiple tiers of security, including bodyguards and regular police.
He also described how the country’s notorious gulags were run by a sinister organisation called The Farm Guidance Directorate.
Once you check in to a gulag, he said, ‘you do not check out’. Even dead bodies remain there, he added.
It has been reported that Kim Jong-Un is planning one of his ‘purges’ to rid North Korea of one of the country’s most powerful figures, after the country’s records reveal that they, not the son of Jong-il, might be the rightful heir to the communist state.
Two hundred figures in Pyongyang are supposedly expected to be in the sights of the current leader of North Korea, because of their loyalty to his uncle, Jang Song-taek, who was executed late last year.
But Choe Ryong-Hae, currently joint chairman of the powerful Politburo Presidium and political director of the North Korea People’s Army has been singled out because of the new evidence which could threaten his leadership.
New evidence from the 1930s show that it might have been the father of Kim Jong-Un’s uncle who led the attack against the Japanese, and that this attack was later claimed by Kim’s grandfather so they could be the ruling family.
The attack was a turning point for North Korea, and helped them to claim a part of the Korean peninsula back from Japanese occupation.
The grandfather of Kim Jong-Un, Kim Il-Sung, is documented in North Korea’s official history as the leader of the 1937 attack on the Japanese base defending the town of Ponchonbo, which helped him gain a foothold of legitimacy in the claim of leadership of the country.
These reports that North Korea is looking to change it’s history again are not the first incidence of such an occurrence.
North Korea regularly changes its own country’s history, with children in the North being taught that the Korean War was started in 1950 by an invasion by the South, and that Kim Jong-il was born in a cabin on the slopes of Mount Paektu, when historians claim that the late leader was actually born in a refugee camp in the Soviet Union.
© Daily Mail, London