Free Republic

Kim Jong Un’s former classmates say he really is ‘dangerous, unpredictable, prone to violence’ By Max Fisher, Updated: December 16 at 12:39 pm North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. (AFP PHOTO / KCNA via KNS) The U.S. government reached alarming conclusions about the personal character of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un based on interviews with people who knew him when he was a student in Switzerland, former U.S. Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs Kurt Campbell revealed on CNN over the weekend. The official U.S. assessment of Kim's character is perhaps not, on its face, very...

THE brother-in-law of Kim Jong-il has taken over the running of North Korea, stamping on dissent while the dictator recovers from a stroke. A stream of reports has reached exiles about the man wielding an iron fist to keep the country under tight control as its 23m people endure a hungry winter. He is Jang Song-thaek, a 62-year-old lifetime party functionary with pomaded hair, gold-rimmed glasses and a taste for dark suits, who was nominated on December 6 as director of the Korean Workers’ party, a title that conceals his role as head of internal security. His chief qualification for...