Inside North Korea's Dynasty (2018–…): Season 1, Episode 1 - Kingdom of the Kims - full transcript

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.