Please welcome to the blog, all the way from North Korea, the Supreme Leader, the Marshall of the Republic, our very own Brilliant Comrade, weighing in at an estimated 290 lb, in the despotic corner, Kim! Jong! Un!
My interest in K-dog was piqued when I found out that he is both older and younger than me. The actual date seems to be undisputed at 8th January but he was born in 1982 according to North Korean authorities, 1983 if you ask South Korean intelligence and 1984 if you ask the anti-Communist pig-dogs in the USA. Buying him a card for his milestone birthdays must be a nightmare.
Little is known about Jong-un’s life growing up. What is known is that he is the third head of a totalitarian family dynasty that started with his grandad. The North Korean calendar actually begins in 1912 when gramps (Kim Il-Sung) was born so 2021 in our calendar is Juche 108 over there. It is also known that Jong-un spent some time in Switzerland in the 90’s to study as a teenager. Switzerland was, and indeed still is, one of the few countries that maintain diplomatic relations with North Korea (the Swiss are so neutral!). It’s believed that it was in Switzerland that he developed his love for basketball, culminating in an invitation to Dennis Rodman (he of Chicago Bulls fame) to visit North Korea. Which he has done, a few times! On one occasion Dennis even sang Happy Birthday to Kim; it’s well worth a Google if you want your mind blown. On his return Rodman said he has made a friend for life and hoped his visit would improve USA-North Korea relations. It’s easy to see why they got on with them both being basket cases. See, it doesn’t seem that mental that Trump was president for four years now does it?
Apparently, his time in Switzerland came to an end when teachers were searching student’s bags for exam cheat-sheets and found a BDSM porn mag in Kim’s. I’m not too sure what exam such a publication would help you with, maybe there are bits of biology in there. Or maybe it improved North Korean torture techniques in a really erotic way in years to, ahem, come. Either way, Kim and his three siblings were yanked from Switzerland almost instantly when his copy of SwissSpankyFun was found. The things they do with Toblerone in those magazines, it’s enough to make you wince (or so I’ve been told).
Kim came to power in 2011 (at the age of 27, 28 or 29) when his father, Kim Jong-il died. The heir apparent was his older brother Kim Jong-nam but he was exiled in 2003 when he tried to get into Japan to visit Disneyland on a fake passport (as you do). Jong-nam was later executed in Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia in 2017 while waiting to board a flight. Four North Korean suspects flew back home after the incident without arrest. Two women, one from Vietnam and the other from Indonesia were arrested and charged with murder. You see, while Jong-nam was waiting in the departure lounge the two women walked up to him, one of them distracting him while the other smeared a liquid on his face. Their defence was they were pranking him as part of a show they both worked for. However the liquid was later identified as a fatal nerve agent VX, which is banned as a chemical weapon. North Korea has not ratified the convention and is believed to have a stockpile. One of the pranksters even had a sweatshirt on that said ‘LOL’ on it. Maybe in this case it stood for Liquid Obliterate Life. Jackass in South East Asia sounds brutal.
Closer to home, it is also believed Jong-un ordered the arrest and execution of his uncle, Jang Song-thaek a couple of years after taking over. Essentially Jang was the second in command at the time of his arrest but at a trial his charges included ‘unwillingly standing up from his seat and only half-clapping’ when Kim Jong-un was appointed as vice-chairman. To be fair I do this at Goodison Park whenever someone shit is substituted on for Everton. Jang was also accused of distributing pornographic images although disappointingly there is no information on whether this included Kim’s personal favourite, a bit of European BDSM. Jang had done well as he had survived two previous Stalin-esque purges but this time he was also accused of trying to overthrow the regime. To be fair, he probably just said something throwaway in a meeting like ‘Maybe we should stop being cocks to the rest of the world and not maintain a system that starves thousands of people every year. Shit, is this microphone on?’
Now to be fair, it’s rumoured to be allegedly not all possibly bad in North Korea. The few foreigners that are allowed in each year, although they are very closely monitored and are not allowed to roam the streets without a minder have reported that beer flows quite freely as does marijuana. It’s also not the worst country in the world according to nonpartisan organisation Freedom House (nonpartisan but has also been criticised in the past for being a bit too USA! USA! USA!). Two countries shattered by civil war, Syria and South Sudan, appeared higher in the list which ranks a number of criteria and North Korea shared 3rd place with Eritrea. However before you start looking at properties and emigrating there, Freedom House did note this:
North Korea presented one of the most glaring threats to world peace, aggressively building up its nuclear arsenal in an attempt to fortify an exceptionally oppressive and criminal regime.
More recently at the start of 2021 Kim Jong-un has been trumpeting about their biggest enemy, the US. At their five-yearly congress of the Ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, Kim spoke about the expansion of their military programme by further developing nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles capable of reaching the whole US. He even added that plans for a nuclear submarine have been completed although I have to say there is a big difference between a plan and something real. The plans were leaked to the media and are shown below:
My only knowledge of North Korea when I was growing up was that I knew the country had played at Goodison Park in Liverpool in the 1966 World Cup. Their very presence in the tournament was a bit sensitive as the UK had been involved in the Korean War less than twenty year earlier. They had qualified by virtue of the fact that FIFA had only allocated one place to the whole of Africa, Asia and Oceania combined. Africa refused to participate in protest, South Korea didn’t try and qualify for rather obvious reasons so North Korea qualified by virtue of tonking Australia 9-2 over two games. After getting Brezhnev’d 3-0 by the Soviet Union and drawing 1-1 against Chile they stunned two-time champions Italy 1-0. The quarter final against Portugal was played at Goodison Park. North Korea were 3-0 up within 22 minutes until the mighty Eusebio started playing. The final score was 5-3 with Eusebio scoring four.
Finally, in a fine example of not really knowing what to believe, some sources claim that the team returned home after their defeat only to be arrested for shaming the country and most were quickly sent to the gulag for years (according to a book written by a defector, The Aquariums of Pyongyang). Documentary makers for the BBC claim that the team lived out quiet lives after their return. This BBC article would seem to confirm they were treated okay when they arrived home as they later returned to Middlesbrough in 2002, the place of their historic win over Italy. They were treated like heroes as the locals took them to their hearts with all of their group games played at Ayresome Park. So either all the good folk of Middlesbrough are in on it and this never happened or for once, there was a happy ending in this totalitarian state.
Daniel McChrystal 