Kim Jong-il V.S. the Starving Masses of North Korea

50,000 news sources. Ground News frees people from algorithmic restraints, illuminates
blindspots and makes media bias explicit.
Holiday sale: purchase the Ground News Vantage subscription today and receive 60% off the
first year. Offer ends December 31st.

Kim Jong-il was born in 1941 in the Siberian village of Vyatskoye. He would follow his father Kim Il-sung as the second leader of North Korea, living an extravagant and eccentric lifestyle, while oppressing and starving the ordinary people.

Copyright: DO NOT translate and re-upload our content on Youtube or other social media.

SIMPLE HISTORY MERCHANDISE

Get the Simple History books on Amazon:

T-Shirts

Simple history gives you the facts, simple!

See the book collection here:

Amazon USA

Amazon UK

Credit:
Created by Daniel Turner (B.A. (Hons) in History, University College London)

Narrator:

Chris Kane

Fischer, Paul (2015). A Kim Jong-Il Production: The Extraordinary True Story of a Kidnapped Filmmaker, His Star Actress, and a Young Dictator's Rise to Power. Flatiron Books
Tyranny of the Weak: North Korea and the World, 1950–1992. Ithaca: Cornell University Press
Lim Jae-Cheon (2009), Kim Jong Il's Leadership of North Korea (1 ed.), London: Routledge
Kim Jong Il: Brief History 1998

[finley]

When he mention the cold hamburger. I thought he's going to send the dude who bought the burgers to 10 years in the camp.

[richardkim]

I am Korean(South). My one of mates had escaped from the gulag of the north korea. When i bought some meals in the Seoul. He sometimes cry for a long time. He told me never imagined for eating the wonderful meals in his life

[TihetrisWeathersby]

The guy was literally Cognac's single biggest customer, He and his inner circle were feasting like Kings

[bluevioletandlilac]

I always remember that passage from "Nothing to Envy" where a doctor from North Korea escapes into China and finds some food laying out in a bowl that just baffles her, because it seems so wonderful. But then she realizes it's for the dogs.
"Dogs in China eat better than doctors in North Korea."

[deadlockraven]

How horrific must it be to live in a world like that with no knowledge the world outside is any better?

[fortis]

Can we appreciate how the thumbnail portrays Kim Jung Il as a Mukbang YouTuber?

[RDSyafriyar]

"Leaving North Korea is not like leaving any other country. It is more like leaving another universe. I will never truly be free of its gravity, no matter how far I journey." - Hyeonseo Lee

[k-baye]

Its ironic that he was a James Bond fan while at the same time being a real life Bond villain.

[XYZ-eoum]

North Korean "double bread with meat" is a delicacy on state airlines' planes, which are often used by foreign diplomats and embassies' workers to travel to the capital.
And everyone who was tasting it, claimed that this was the worst kind of burger they have ever eaten.

[CHO]

Team America's portrayal of him was spot on...

[PugglesH]

“Children need the love of the great leader to grow”
So is that why the average North Korean man is 5’4?

[DesGardius-megf]

“It’s the kind of evil where there is no feeling, it's just emptiness.”

—Michael Breen, author of _Kim Jong-Il: North Korea's Dear Leader_

[evandromiyake]

There was a brazilian journalist (i'm brazilian btw) who went into a trip to NK and he was explaining that one day he was walking down a country road alone (with his guides). No cars, bikes, motorcycles, horses, nothing, and then, a girl in traditional clothes crossed his path and smiled.

A single girl in a remot road with no traffic whatsoever wearing traditional korean garments just happened to pass by and smile to him...

[HistoryOfRevolutions]

"If your heart isn't in the right place, you're no different from the beasts in the forest"

- Hwang Sok-yong

[Goffy]

Dude eats more in a day than thousands of families do in a week.

[jojoreztorc]

Fun fact about Pulgasari, the man they tricked and kidnapped to play the monster was none other than Godzilla himself, Kenpachiro Satsuma, who played the G man from 1984 to 1995. He had also worked alongside the original Godzilla suit actor Haruo Nakajima in the 70s, playing the monsters Gigan and Hedorah to combat Nakajima’s heroic nuclear King of Monsters. Not only that, a massive amount of Showa era (1954-1975) effects crew members for Godzilla were also duped into filming Pulgasari. The last fun fact was that Kim’s monster pet project was inspired by Kenpachiro’s first outing as Godzilla, 1984’s Return Of Godzilla.

[theprofessional]

There is a mission in Hitman that is based on the kidnapping . It is the Singapore sniper mission . A poet from from Khandanyang a fictional East Asian dictatorship that is based on North Korea is kidnapped . The soldiers agent 47 fights are called the heavenly guard which are based on the North Korean supreme guard. The dictator in the game is called the heavenly leader when Kim Jong Il was called the dear leader .

[natejones]

So the village where the power goes out and there is the tower in the center, a friend of mine told me about that village when he was on the dmz in the 80s. It's a completely empty village where they drove people in the morning to walk around the empty buildings and bus out in the evening. One of his tasks as an observer was to watch the same guy ever morning drive up to the tower and hook up the huge NK flag and raise it. He said at night cut outs of people would go by the windows automatically, he said you could set your watch to when they would come by the windows.

[darianthescorpion]

I’ll be the one to say, I feel very privileged to not live in North Korea. All my life, I’ve seen it as a terrible place to raise a family. And unfortunately that will never change for as long as the Kim Dynasty still reigns.

[cramsa]

I had a college friend who was a North Korean and his family got out, he is a very intelligent and hardworking person and if North Korean was a free society, imagine the potential.