Kingdom of the Kims: Rise to Power (Full Episode) | Inside North Korea's Dynasty | Nat Geo

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For decades, Korea and its people labor under Japanese imperialist rule. But in 1912, in a small tow...

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POST: When he was a child he was given a uniform and called 'Comrade General'. At 28, his father died, and he became the youngest head of state in the world. At 30 he had his uncle killed.

TODD (over TV): The official North Korean news agency report on this called his uncle quote, 'despicable human scum' and 'worse than a dog'. POST: And he befriended Dennis Rodman. RODMAN: I've seen a lot of weird things in my life, I've seen a lot of stuff but that right there blew me away.

I just couldn't believe how much power this, this young kid got. All I want to say is this to my, my friend. ♪ Happy birthday to you, ♪ ♪ Happy birthday to you, ♪ ♪ Happy birthday to you.

♪♪ POST: At 34 his half-brother was murdered. REPORTER (over TV): Kim Jong-Nam died under mysterious circumstances while waiting for a flight at Kuala Lumpur International Airport. POST: Then he developed nuclear weapons that could hit America.

TRUMP: Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself. NARRATOR: Now the world wants to know what he's thinking, and what he might do next. But to get inside his mind, you have to meet his family.

POST: It's simply impossible to understand Kim Jong-Un and predict his actions without putting that in the context of his father and grandfather. NARRATOR: Only three men, one family, have ruled this country and taken on the world. TRUMP: North Korea should have been handled 25 years ago, 20 years, ago, 15 years ago, 10 years ago and 5 years ago.

But I'll fix the mess. NARRATOR: Now, as it all comes to a head, this is the story of the Kim's, a family of dictators. PERRY: They've been smart, and they've been ruthless, and they've been single minded on their overarching goal, which is to preserve the Kim dynasty: to keep the regime in power.

(cheering). ♪ MARTIN: I have but one heart ♪ ♪ This heart I bring you ♪ ♪ I have but one heart ♪ ♪ To share with you ♪♪ POST: Leadership has to do with a sense of destiny. Why do the followers choose this leader rather than that leader?

It's because that leader has been able to tune into, to respond to the need for rescuing by the followers. And to shape himself to fit that mode, not consciously, but there is that chemistry between leader and follower that can be so powerful. ♪ MARTIN: And nobody else before you ♪ ♪ Ever has heard me say.

♪♪ POST: What is necessary is to ensure the total loyalty of the people and anyone connected with dissidents, opposition, rebellion, must be killed to ensure the purity of the people. NARRATOR: Jerrold Post is a psychiatrist whose job it was to get inside the minds of the world's most dangerous dictators. POST: For 21 years I was leading a new kind of intelligence really.

Assessing world leaders for the President, Secretary of State, Secretary of Defense. Kim Il-Sung was not just a charismatic leader, he was a leader of a wounded people, wishing to be led in a heroic fashion. BREEN: Kim Il-Sung had credentials as a guerrilla fighter, and he was a sort of rough and ready fellow; you know, he'd been in prison, he'd been living a scruffy life as a guerrilla for years.

He suffered a lot for the sake of his country. NARRATOR: To understand the strange psychology of North Korea, you have to go back to where it all began, in the frozen forests of eastern Asia. Here a young Kim Il-Sung fought running battles with the Japanese army who'd brutally occupied Korea.

The Koreans had been utterly humiliated and dehumanized under Japanese rule. Then in 1945, everything changed, when America dropped nuclear bombs on Japan. And so, the second world war ended, and the Japanese empire collapsed.

The Soviet Union and America divided Korea between them and cut the country in half. RUSK: We looked at the map and thought that it would be a good idea if Seoul, the capital of Korea, were in our zone of occupation and there was no clearly distinguishing geographic feature, but there was the 38th parallel and so we came back and suggested that, and the Russians accepted the 38th parallel, well, with alacrity. NARRATOR: It was Stalin who chose the young guerrilla fighter, Kim Il-Sung, to lead the communist north.

POST: When Kim Il-Sung came into power, in effect he was the puppet of the Soviet Union. NARRATOR: At first the Korean people weren't sure if he was fit to be their leader. (speaking in Korean).

(cheering). POST: The uh Japanese invasion had stripped the Korean people of their dignity and they were hungering for someone who could lead them out of this. And Kim Il-Sung, with his eloquent speech, his ideas for independence, gave the people enthusiasm.

For Kim he was supposed to be the ruler of the entire Korean peninsula, and this arbitrary 38th parallel was like a major wound, it was almost like a part of his own body had been cut off. NARRATOR: He saw the Americans like an evil empire, intruding on Korean land. Kim's first big move as leader was audacious.

With Stalin's help he amassed huge numbers of tanks and artillery, and then, in 1950, he invaded South Korea. NARRATOR: Kim always dreamt of ruling all of Korea, and now he was trying to achieve that ambition. BUSSEY: The North Koreans were extremely well trained.

They were extremely well organized, and they were tremendously motivated. They, they were there to make the fatherland look better and they did. NARRATOR: But he had badly underestimated the military might of the Americans, and their willingness to use it.

TRUMAN: The free nations have learned a fateful lesson from the 1930s. That lesson is that aggression must be met firmly. NARRATOR: The United States hit back mercilessly.

DANCY (over TV): During the Korean War 200,000 people lived in Pyongyang, the North Korean capital. U. S.

bombers dropped 200,000 bombs on the city. One for every person there. MERAY: Every city was a collection of chimneys.

I don't why houses collapsed and chimneys did not, but I saw thousands of chimneys and that was all. NARRATOR: Kim's dream of reuniting Korea was in tatters. In a war that lasted three years, his country was flattened.

More than a million North Koreans were dead, and he'd gained nothing. In 1953. .

. Stalin, the man who had put him in the job, died. Having lost the Korean war, and his benefactor, Kim felt vulnerable.

His next move was to start a program of controlling his people, the like of which the world had never seen. POST: One of the best ways of dealing with criticism is to get rid of the critics, and there were two ways of getting rid of the critics. One was to kill them, and one was to put them into the gulag.

The degree of ruthlessness of Kim Il-Sung was quite extraordinary. He developed a kind of caste system called 'songbun', which had three basic divisions: those who were loyal, those who were wavering and those who were hostile, and anyone identified as hostile, including even having an uncle or a grandfather who was disloyal would lead to all of the extended family being sent to the gulag. POST: Hundreds of thousands were subjected to this.

In effect he went through a purification of Korean society. NARRATOR: And so, by the start of the 1960s, Kim had a grip on the North Korean people, and if you looked at the Korean peninsula as a whole, it was as if a giant psychology experiment was unfolding. In the north: communism, a planned economy, soviet-style dictatorship.

In the south: capitalism, free markets, and American influence. In the first few years, the north's organization and planning looked like it was working. Some even defected from the south to the north.

But as the south started to prosper it would become painfully obvious which system was making people richer. While president Johnson visited the south, Kim was plotting his next move. POST: The key ingredients of dictators are paranoia, no capacity for empathy, and a willingness to use whatever aggression is necessary to accomplish one's goals.

NARRATOR: Kim believed that the South Korean people were desperate to be liberated, and given the opportunity, would rise up and support him. So, he hatched a plan to kill the president of South Korea. NARRATOR: Only three men have ever ruled North Korea, and the template for how to do it was set by the first Kim, the grandfather, Kim Il-Sung.

In 1968 he wanted to strike a blow at his South Korean neighbors, so he sent 31 of his top commandos over the border. Their mission: to go to the blue house where the South Korean president lived and kill him. One of Kim's commandos survives to tell the tale.

NARRATOR: Kim's commandos were expected to take their own lives, rather than be captured. NARRATOR: Having not taken his own life, he knew there would be consequences. NARRATOR: If Kim thought that the South Koreans wanted to be led by him, he was badly mistaken.

In fact, after the blue house raid, they burned effigies of him in the streets. Kim needed to bolster his image. To help him, he turned to his son.

The second member of the Kim dynasty. Kim Jong-Il would ultimately succeed his father and prove to be an eccentric and unpredictable leader. But as a young man, he had a genius for propaganda and began a process of turning his father into a god in the minds of the North Korean people.

(singing in Korean). He started by showing his father as the father of the nation, the person who gave every child their food and clothes. (singing in Korean).

All religions were stamped out, and a massive statue-building program began. POST: While we may know the country was devastated, and is economically a basket case at this point, the people of North Korea don't know because of this Bureau of Propaganda and Agitation which shapes the nation's consciousness. The Hermit Kingdom is an apt description for North Korea.

A, people couldn't leave. And B, people couldn't come in so it's isolated and has no access to international communication. NARRATOR: A potent cocktail of isolation, fear, and propaganda put the Kim's on the path to becoming gods in the minds of their people.

Next, they would start to take on their arch-enemies: the Americans. POST: I think it's important to understand the value of enemies. Enemies are to be cherished, they're to be cultivated.

It's convenient to have someone to blame for your leadership failures. NARRATOR: For Kim, having the constant threat of war with America was useful in controlling his people; any sign that America was threatening North Korea was helpful in making him their protector. So, when a US spy ship was seen off the coast, it was an opportunity for Kim to define himself in the eyes of his people.

CHICCA: The first shots were aimed at the bridge, shattering glass and raking the ship back and forth with machine gun fire. The Pueblo was an intelligence collection ship to pick up electronic surveillance in Russia and North Korea. But we were unarmed, totally unarmed.

They started shooting their, their bigger shells at us that came right through the side of the ship and just blew us up. And it just literally lifted me up, blew me down the hall. It took off the bottom of my scrotum and went into my upper leg.

Eventually when the Koreans came on board the ship they tied us up and blindfolded us. And matter of fact they kicked me in my wound. NARRATOR: Kim had captured a US Navy vessel and had taken 82 Americans prisoner.

In the middle of the night, the president of the United States was informed. JOHNSON (over phone): What's your speculation on what happened to. .

. MCNAMARA (over phone): Mr President, I honestly don't know, and I think we need a Cuban Missile Crisis approach to this (bleep) we ought to get locked in a room and you ought to keep us there, insist we stay there until we come up with answers to three questions: what was the Korean objective, secondly, what are they going to do now, blackmail us, let it go, you know, what's, what's, and thirdly, what should we do now? JOHNSON: President Johnson is at the head of the table, his back to us, and that is I, Tom Johnson.

Taking the notes. "The President: What I want to know is how do we get the ship and the boys back. " "Clark Clifford.

" "I think the President must proceed on the basis of probabilities and not possibilities. I think the North Koreans are engaged in harassments. " "A moral posture would be better if the North Koreans move first.

I am deeply sorry about the ship, and about the 83 men, but I do not think it is worth a resumption of the Korean War. " There was deep concern that however the United States reacted militarily could trigger another large-scale war. And the United States, to be honest, was not prepared for another large war when we already had a very, very serious war going in Vietnam.

And that was something President Johnson wanted to avoid at almost all cost. CHICCA: For the first 40 days I don't think they knew what they were going to do with us, whether they were going to keep us alive, I think they fully were as surprised as we were that there was no retaliation. We fully expected retaliation and we knew we might not make it.

Obviously, no one likes the idea of dying, however, uh, we really wanted some help and it just didn't come. NARRATOR: Kim Il-Sung used the capture of the pueblo as a propaganda triumph. CHICCA: We never saw him, he never came by.

But we were very aware, from, from the very beginning, of Kim Il-Sung. Actually, you never just said Kim Il-Sung. It would be always preceded or followed by these long eulogies of praise.

I just memorized one of them for the hell of it: "Peerless patriot ever-victorious iron-willed genius commander, and one of the outstanding international and working-class movement leaders, Marshal Kim Il-Sung. " It had to be said with reverence. Actually, we had talked about if he came by we'd try to jump him and see if we could use him as a hostage to get out of there.

NARRATOR: Kim paraded the captured Americans in front of the cameras and forced them to confess to having been in Korean waters. REPORTER: The crew unanimously admitted the fact that they had intruded deep in territorial waters, and conducted espionage on 17 occasions, and signed a joint apology to the DPRK government. BUCHER: To my mind it was the deepest intrusion I had ever made into the waters of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

NARRATOR: With 82 Americans in captivity, the US government signed a statement of apology, prepared by the North Koreans, and so, avoided another Korean war. REPORTER (over TV): The US representative was so confused that he even forgot to write a date in the apology. CHICCA: All of a sudden, the beatings just stopped.

Everyone that had visible bruises and things like that were doctored up a bit for a trip down to Panmunjom, turned us loose. REPORTER (over TV): Here at the Bridge of No Return the members of the Pueblo are returning to U. S.

custody. The transfer is taking place just 11 months to the day after the Pueblo was captured off Wonsan Harbor. When they reached the free side of the bridge, they began to relax a little, perhaps finally comprehending that the idea and dream of being home for Christmas was all but a reality.

NARRATOR: To this day, the USS Pueblo sits in North Korean waters, a trophy for the Kim's. And for his people, further evidence that the first Kim could do no wrong. Fifty years later, his grandson is keeping the myth alive.

LEE: Kim Jong-Un in particular is very strategic about what he wears. Often, he'll wear say a hat, and clothes that are identical to an outfit that his grandfather wore. That's a way that Kim Jong-Un piggybacks on his grandfather's legacy, to legitimize his role as the leader.

This is meant to refer back to a certain period in North Korean history. North Koreans are going to remember that, they're going to see that and say, 'Ah he's just like his grandfather. ' (cheering).

NARRATOR: In the late 1960s, his grandfather was developing a taste for brinkmanship with the United States. But his next move would take him and his country to the limit. NARRATOR: In the 1970s, the world changed.

President Nixon went to China to meet chairman MAO. NIXON: There is no reason for us to be enemies. NARRATOR: And he travelled to the Soviet Union to make deals with Brezhnev.

All of which was bad news for Kim Il-Sung. He'd been relying on his fellow communist leaders for back-up in his battles with America. However, if he was feeling less support, at first, he didn't show it, as he continued to attack his enemies.

(shouting and gunfire). REPORTER (over TV): The defendant, 22-year-old Mun Se-Gwang admitted he attempted to kill South Korean President Park Chung-Hee, but had not intended killing Madame Park. He said he acted under orders from North Korean Communist agents in Japan.

NARRATOR: Then, in 1976, the fate of North Korea hung in the balance. It came down to an event in the demilitarized zone, an event that centered around a single tree. REPORTER (over TV): The Demilitarized Zone between the two Koreas is one of the world's great artificial ideological fault lines.

Here the great plates of the Capitalist and Communist worlds press and chafe against each other. It's a place of suspicion, bristling with mutual threat and mutual fear. VIERRA: There was a poplar tree, which are usually very slender and don't sprawl.

But this tree was a sprawling poplar. It obscured the visibility between two observation posts, so the soldiers had brought it to my attention, and I said, 'Well we'll need to send a work party to go up there and trim the lower branches of the tree. ' NARRATOR: Little did they know, that the North Koreans believed that this tree had been planted by their leader, Kim Il-Sung.

LEHRER (over TV): Here's the scene: the UN Command Force begin their trimming work on the tree, the North Koreans arrive now. After first saying it was alright to trim it, some twenty minutes later they ordered the work to be halted. As fate would have it, the Americans are in white hats, the North Koreans in the dark ones.

According to witnesses, a North Korean army officer yelled, 'Kill! ' and 30 or so North Korean soldiers grabbed axe handles and started hitting the Americans and their workers. And suddenly, less than five minutes after it all began, it's over.

Left behind, the body of one of the dead American officers; the other is in the bushes here by the tree. VIERRA: From the moment the incident occurred, I received a call from my commander-in-chief, General Stilwell, and he told me, 'You know, we will have to take some sort of action. ' It went everywhere from 'nuke 'em' to 'run a couple of divisions up there', 'wipe 'em out' you know, you name it.

The whole gamut of military options. I said, 'My alternative would be that we form a task force and we go up there and we cut the tree down, completely, and we leave it there for them to see. ' And he said immediately, 'I agree.

' NARRATOR: The mission was called operation Paul Bunyan, named after the larger-than-life folk hero. ♪ PAUL: With my double-blade ax and my hobnail boots I go where ♪ ♪ the timber's tall. ♪ ♪ When there's work to be done, don't mess around ♪ ♪ Just sing right out for Paul.

♪♪ NARRATOR: Bunyan was immortalized in a classic 1950s cartoon, as a symbol of old-fashioned American strength. ♪ LUMBERJACKS: Hey Paul! ♪♪ PAUL: I'm comin', boys!

♪ LUMBERJACKS: Paul Bunyan, ♪♪ NARRATOR: No one would be able to stop Paul Bunyan chopping down a tree. HART (over TV): Good evening, circling over a poplar tree in the zone between the two Koreas were 26 armed helicopters, an unknown number of Phantom Jets, F1-11s and three B-52s; flying protection for 300 American and South Korean soldiers who were cutting the tree down. REPORTER (over TV): The aircraft carrier Midway cruised off the Korean coast today in response to the murder of two American officers in the Demilitarized Zone between North and South Korea.

TOMLINSON (over TV): The Midway and its planes will augment two U. S. Air Force fighter squadrons already sent to Korea from Okinawa and Idaho.

VIERRA: We assembled the largest combined military operation since the end of the Korean War. Every soldier with a gun pointed into North Korea. HART (over TV): President Ford's new secretary Ron Messing said the President himself approved the plan to go in there and cut down the tree.

CHANCELLOR (over TV): The North Koreans called President Ford a 'boss of war'. (inaudible radio). VIERRA: I was on the ground, going to cut down the tree, but all of this was backing me up.

The North Koreans knew the ships were off the coast, they knew the bombers were above them, they could tell that, they could surveil that. MAN (over radio): At our discretion. VIERRA: It was a tinderbox; any spark could set if off.

As far as I was concerned, it was the last day I'd be alive on this earth. We used chainsaws to cut down the tree. We just let it fall where it lay with no regard, just a ragged stump there.

Mission complete. I'm sure the magnitude of the force played a large measure in their deciding it was not a good idea to respond. TOMLINSON (over TV): North Korea has expressed regret over the killing of two American Army officers in the Demilitarized Zone last Wednesday.

However, the regret was expressed in passing in a statement that implied that the United States provoked the incident. NARRATOR: The North Koreans backed down. MURPHY: The United States didn't want to go to war over this incident, neither did China or Russia, and they made it clear to Kim that he was not going to be backed up, and they said you'd better apologize.

This was the first instance in the entire time that Kim has been leading North Korea that he ever apologized for anything. NARRATOR: The tree-cutting incident showed that even Kim Il-Sung had his limits. When faced with the threat of overwhelming force, he stepped back from the brink.

For other world leaders, such a public climbdown might have been a problem, but not for him. By now it made no difference to how his people felt about him. His social control, and his son's propaganda, were giving him complete control of his people's minds.

POST: As Kim Il-Sung aged, and saw time is shortening they increasingly became preoccupied with getting a nuclear program. NARRATOR: His son, who had given his father god-like status, was beginning to have designs on becoming leader himself. POST: It's always difficult to succeed a great father.

But it's almost impossible to step into the shoes of God. Captioned by Cotter Captioning Services.