Did you know that Kim Jong-il’s first son, Kim Jong-nam, was assassinated by women who (allegedly) took orders from Kim Jong-un!? The book was published in 2004, before this happened, but towards the end, the author makes a few predictions as to who would take the reigns from Kim Jong-il next. Luckily, 20 years later, that info is available to us and I was surprised (although in hind sight, I shouldn’t have been) to find that the story of the N. Korean monarchy continues to twist and turn as history progresses.

What is potentially less debatable is that this wasn’t the first time that a potential sibling rivalry (the stakes are high in N. Korea) played out. It turns out that Kim Jong-un’s father, Kim Jong-il, may have taken it upon himself to secure the his path to succession. As a 2004 Archive.org publication by Jerrold M Post of Cornell University recalls,

Ko Yong-hwan, in his book Kim Jong Il as Seen by a Senior Official Who Defected, wrote about the accident in a similar manner:

In the early summer of 1946, Kim Il Sung's sons, Yura and Shura, were playing together in the pond. Yura, who was a mischievous boy, had fun pouring water onto Shura and pulling his leg to topple him into water. Playing, they moved away from the edge of the pond, and when Shura, afraid of going into a deeper side, tried to come out, Yura caught him and stopped him from coming out. When the younger brother tried to move to a shallower spot, Yura pushed him into a deeper corner. The younger brother was at the point of drowning, uttering the sound of "blub-blub," but it was a funnier scene to Yura. But the old saying goes, "A tiger comes to a place where you find fauns." Thus, the younger brother drowned.

If you forced me to defend the morality of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il, I would have to take the angle that there’s a possibility they actually did not know of the conditions in the camps. The concept (and practice) of bad news being kept from the boss is an unfortunate reality not only in N. Korea, but in everyday business. So it wouldn’t take a stretch of the imagination to understand that the lieutenants to the Kims probably did not want to risk their lives providing bad news (that the economic landscape of the country is in deep shit) to the Supreme Leader. So, there is indeed a possibility the Kim Jong-il didn’t grasp the full extent…but rest assured, I have no interest in his further defense.

This book is, as many other history books are, more proof that history is weirder (and more entertaining, to me) than fiction.