Kim Jong-un - Early Life

Early Life

Jong-un is thought to have been born in 1983 or early 1984.

According to reports first published in Japanese newspapers, he went to school in Switzerland near Bern. First reports claimed he attended the private English-language “International School” in Gümligen near Bern under the name “Chol-pak” or “Pak-chol” from 1993 until 1998. He was described as shy, a good student who got along well with his classmates and was a basketball fan. He was chaperoned by an older student who was thought to be his bodyguard.

Later it was reported that Kim Jong-un attended the public school “Liebefeld Steinhölzli” in Köniz near Bern under the name “Pak-un” or “Un-pak” from 1998 until 2000 as the son of an employee of the Embassy of North Korea. Authorities of Köniz confirmed that a student from North Korea, registered as the son of a member of the Embassy attended the school from August 1998 till fall 2000, but were unable to give details about his identity. Pak-un first attended a special class for foreign-language children and later attended the regular classes of the 6th, 7th, 8th and part of the final 9th year, leaving the school abruptly in fall 2000. He was described as a well-integrated and ambitious student who liked to play basketball. However, his grades and attendance rating are reported to have been poor. The ambassador of North Korea in Switzerland, Ri Tcheul, had a close relationship with him and acted as a mentor. One of Pak-un's classmates told reporters that he had told him that he was the son of the leader of North Korea. According to some reports, Jong-un was described by classmates as a shy child who was awkward with girls, indifferent to political issues but distinguished himself in sports, and had a fascination with the American National Basketball Association and Michael Jordan. One friend claimed that he had been shown pictures of Pak-un with Kobe Bryant and Toni Kukoč taken at an unknown location.

In April 2012, new documents came to light indicating that Kim Jong-un had lived in Switzerland since 1991 or 1992, earlier than previously thought.

The Laboratory of Anatomic Anthropology at the University of Lyon, France, after comparing the picture of the boy Pak-un, taken at the school “Liebefeld Steinhölzli” in 1999 with a picture of Kim Jong-un from 2012 came to the conclusion that the two faces show a conformity of 95 percent. The head of the institute, Raoul Perrot, a forensic anthropologist, considers it most likely that the two pictures show the same person.

It is believed that the student at the Gümligen “International School” was not Kim Jong-un but his elder brother Kim Jong-chol. It is not known whether the student known as Pak-un in “Liebefeld Steinhölzli” lived in Switzerland prior to 1998. All the children of Kim Jong-il are said to have lived in Switzerland, as well as the mother of the two youngest sons, who lived in Geneva for some time. The Kim clan is also said to organise family meetings in Switzerland at Lake Geneva and Interlaken.

Most analysts agree that Kim Jong-un attended Kim Il-sung University, a leading officer-training school in Pyongyang from 2002 to 2007.

For many years, only one confirmed photograph of him was known outside North Korea, apparently taken in the mid-1990s, when he was eleven. Occasional other supposed images of him surfaced but were often disputed. It was only in June 2010, shortly before he was given official posts and publicly introduced to the North Korean people, that more pictures were released of Kim, taken when he was attending school in Switzerland. The first official image of him as an adult was a group photograph released on 30 September 2010, at the end of the party conference that effectively anointed him, in which he is seated in the front row, two places from his father. This was followed by newsreel footage of him attending the conference.