JERROLD 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.
(INTENSE MUSIC PLAYS)
At 30, he had his uncle killed.
BRIAN TODD: The official North Korean news agency report on this
called his uncle, in quote, "despicable human scum"
and "worse than a dog."
(APPLAUSE)
POST: And he befriended Dennis Rodman.
DENNIS 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.
(APPLAUSE)
Happy birthday to you
POST: At 34, his half-brother was murdered.
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.
-(BEEPS) -(ROCKET LAUNCHES)
Rocket man is on a suicide mission for himself.
(INTENSE MUSIC PLAYS)
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.
DONALD TRUMP: North Korea should have been handled twenty-five years ago,
twenty years ago, fifteen years ago, ten years ago and five 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.
WILLIAM 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.
(THEME MUSIC PLAYING)
(ROARING APPLAUSE)
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.
I never felt this way
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.
(CROWD APPLAUDING, CHEERING)
NARRATOR: Jerrold Post is a psychiatrist
whose job it was to get inside the minds of the world's most dangerous dictators.
For 21 years, I was, um, 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.
MICHAEL 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.
(TENSE MUSIC PLAYS)
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.
(INTENSE MUSIC PLAYS)
The Koreans had been utterly humiliated and dehumanized under Japanese rule.
Then in 1945, everything changed...
when America dropped nuclear bombs on Japan.
(LOUD EXPLOSION)
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.
DEAN 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 rest of us 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.
(PEOPLE CHEERING)
NARRATOR: At first, the Korean people
weren't sure he was fit to be their leader.
KANG IN DEOK: (IN KOREAN) As a child I saw Kim Il-Sung.
A young man came to the stage.
Everyone was caught by surprise.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
I could hear the older people saying,
"Isn't he a fake? He's too young."
(CROWD CHEERING LOUDLY)
POST: (IN ENGLISH) The 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.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS)
POST: 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 as 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.
(INTENSE MUSIC PLAYS)
(INTENSE MUSIC CONTINUES)
Kim always dreamt of ruling all of Korea...
and now he was trying to achieve that ambition.
(INTENSE MUSIC CONTINUES)
(EXPLOSIVES BLAST)
CHARLES BUSSEY: The North Koreans were extremely well-trained.
They were extremely well-organized, and they were tremendously motivated.
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.
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.
JOHN DANCY: During the Korean War, 200,000 people lived in Pyongyang,
the North Korean capital.
US bombers dropped 200,000 bombs on the city.
One for every person there.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS)
TIBOR 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... 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'd put him in the job, died.
So having lost the Korean War, and his benefactor...
Kim felt vulnerable.
So 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.
KANG CHOL HWAN: (IN KOREAN) Three generations of my family
were dragged to the prison camp,
which included my father,
uncle, sister and me...
we went when I was 9,
and we were there 10 years.
I still don't know what my grandfather did wrong.
During the first three months...
many died of starvation or malnutrition.
If you buried the bodies, they gave you a bowl of corn noodle soup.
(IN ENGLISH) Hundreds of thousands were subjected to this.
In effect, he went through a purification of Korean society.
(APPLAUSE)
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.
(MID-TEMPO MUSIC PLAYS)
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.
(INTENSE MUSIC CONTINUES)
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.
And 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.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS)
KIM SHIN-JO: (IN KOREAN) As we approached the Blue House...
there was an entire army unit waiting for us, blocking the road.
(MID-TEMPO MUSIC CONTINUES)
And the battle started.
A big battle.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS)
As soon as the firing started...
I realized we will never make it...
to the Blue House. So I escaped.
I ran away from my team
and climbed the hill behind me.
That was how I survived.
MAN: (IN KOREAN) The pursued enemy gang was completely exhausted
and the fury of our team to hunt down every last one of them was sky high.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS)
They shouted, "Come out. And you will live."
I had a hand on a grenade...
And was about to pull the pin,
But I thought, "I want to live."
I didn't think of Kim Il-Sung, I didn't think of the revolution or my family.
I couldn't think of anything but myself.
I was only 25 years old...
with a sudden, growing attachment to life.
I put down the grenade...
and I surrendered.
NARRATOR: (IN ENGLISH) Kim's commandos were expected to take their own lives,
rather than be captured.
SHIN-JO: (IN KOREAN) I had to identify...
my comrades' bodies.
I thought, "You guys are better than me,
you sacrificed your lives for the revolution."
NARRATOR: (IN ENGLISH) Having not taken his own life...
he knew there would be consequences.
(IN KOREAN) I had to accept the fact that my parents,
my family, would face execution...
and so, I heard the news...
they executed my parents publicly...
in Chung-Jin Stadium...
they said, "Comrade Kim Shin-Jo, is a traitor.
Is a traitor."
(SERENE MUSIC PLAYS)
I will never forgive Kim Il-Sung.
On the other hand, I am a pastor
and I will forgive him as a religious man.
But personally? No, not personally.
(SERENE MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: (IN ENGLISH) 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.
(MID-TEMPO MUSIC PLAYS)
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.
(BAND MUSIC PLAYING)
(KIDS 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.
(KIDS CONTINUE SINGING IN KOREAN)
All religions were stamped out,
and a massive statue-building program began.
(KIDS CONTINUE SINGING IN KOREAN)
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: And so a potent cocktail of isolation, fear, and propaganda...
put the Kim's on the path to becoming Gods in the minds of their people.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
Next, they would start to take on their archenemies...
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.
(IN KOREAN) Our great leader Kim Il-Sung
said the country is in danger.
American imperialists are intensifying their aggression...
and their tricks to provoke a new war
are becoming more and more cunning
so said the great leader.
Let's pulverize the American imperialists!
(CHANTING) Pulverize!
NARRATOR: (IN ENGLISH) For Kim, having the constant threat of war with America...
was useful in controlling his people.
Any sign that America was threatening North Korea
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.
(INTENSE MUSIC CONTINUES)
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS)
(IN KOREAN) When we approached the enemy ship
they hoisted a flag, and it was American.
The moment I saw that, I was so furious my eyes were shooting daggers.
I wanted to rush at the enemy,
tear their hearts out and shove them in the water.
The American invaders are the aggressors.
They are my personal enemy
as they brutally murdered my mother and young brother...
during the Korean War.
(SUSPENSEFUL MUSIC PLAYS)
ROBERT 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 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.
(CHUCKLING)
Eventually when the Koreans came on board the ship,
they tied us up and blindfolded us.
Matter of fact, they kicked me in my wound.
NARRATOR: And so 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.
LYNDON B. JOHNSON: What's your speculation on what happened to--
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?"
TOM 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, uh, 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.
Erm... Obviously, no one likes the idea of dying,
however, uh, we really wanted some help...
and it just didn't come.
(INTENSE MUSIC PLAYS)
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 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,
Marshall Kim Il-Sung."
It had to be said with reverence. (CHUCKLES)
Actually... (CHUCKLES) ...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.
DPRK NEWSCASTER: (ACCENTED) 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.
"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.
(INTENSE MUSIC PLAYS)
DPRK NEWSCASTER: (ACCENTED) 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.
ABC NEWSCASTER: Here at the Bridge of No Return
the members of the Pueblo are returning to US 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 the Korean people...
further evidence that the first Kim could do no wrong.
Fifty years later, his grandson is keeping the myth alive.
JEAN 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 gonna 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.
(TENSE MUSIC PLAYS)
NARRATOR: In the 1970s, the world changed.
President Nixon went to China to meet Chairman Mao.
There is no reason for us to be enemies.
NARRATOR: And he traveled to the Soviet Union
to make deals with Brezhnev.
(AUDIENCE CHEERING)
(CROWD LAUGHING)
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 at least, he didn't show it...
as he continued to attack his enemies.
-(GUNSHOTS) -(AUDIENCE SHOUTING)
NBC NEWSCASTER: 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.
BBC PRESENTER: 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.
VICTOR VIERRA: There was a poplar tree...
which are usually very slender and don't sprawl.
Uh, 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 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.
(INTENSE MUSIC PLAYS)
JIM LEHRER: 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 all right to trim it,
some 20 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 ax 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 a larger-than-life folk hero.
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.
-Hey, Paul! -I'm comin', boys!
NARRATOR: No one would be able to stop Paul Bunyan chopping down a tree.
(HELICOPTERS WHIRRING)
JOHN HART: Good evening, circling over a poplar tree
in the zone between the two Koreas
were 26 armed helicopters, an unknown number of Phantom Jets,
F-111s and three B-52s,
flying protection for 300 American and South Korean soldiers
who were cutting the tree down.
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.
FRANK TOMLINSON: The Midway and its planes will augment
two US 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.
President Ford's new secretary Ron Messing said the President himself approved
the plan to go in there and cut down the tree.
JOHN CHANCELLOR: The North Koreans called President Ford a "boss of war".
DISPATCH: An estimated three four five decimal zero.
Over. Three four five zero...
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.
(INDISTINCT RADIO CONVERSATION)
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.
(TENSE MUSIC PLAYS)
We used chainsaws to cut down the tree.
We just let it fall where it lay, uh, 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.
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: And so the North Koreans backed down.
JOHN 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 gonna 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 climb-down 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.
KO YOUNG-HWAN: (IN KOREAN) You have to understand in the north,
Kim Il-Sung is actually God.
He is a special man. A unique man.
Every North Korean would burst into tears just by looking at him.
POST: (IN ENGLISH) As Kim Il-Sung aged, and so 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.
(CROWD CHEERING, APPLAUDING)