By Nate Thayer

A photo of Kim Jong Chol in a Dennis Rodman Chicago Bulls #91 shirt, Berne, Switzerland

The visit of to North Korea of basketball star Dennis Rodman may seem odd to outsiders, but the eccentric, cross dressing, pierced, and tattooed Hollywood celebrity has a very high level fan club in Pyongyang.

Both North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and his brother, Kim Jong Chol are known to be ardent fans of  American basketball, with dictator Kim Jong-un reported to have poster’s of  basketball star Michael Jordan on his wall during his schooldays and his brother, Kim Jong Chol, photographed wearing the Chicago Bulls uniform jersey with Dennis Rodman’s number on it.

It is also known that both brothers are big fans of Belgian action movie star Jean Claude Van Damme, with whom Dennis Rodman co-starred in the Hollywood flick “Double Team”.

“Kim Jong-un especially liked American basketball star Michael Jordan and action film star Jean Claude Van Damme”, reported a Swiss magazine in 2009, where both brothers attended boarding school.

Kim Family Action Heroes Rodman and Van Damme: They Don’t Play by the Rules

Kim Jong Chol “enjoyed watching action films.  He often would mimic the fighting movements.  Kim Jong Chol’s public photos include a picture of him playing basketball wearing the jersey of his favorite team, the Chicago Bulls,” said Zeng Cheng Zhang, the head of the research department head of Shizong Institute of South-North Relations.

The pictures were released by Swiss school classmates of Kim Jong Chol showing him on a Berne basketball court wearing Dennis Rodman’s Chicago Bull’s #91 basketball jersey.

While North Korean’s are fed a hefty diet of anti-American propaganda, supporting American basketball has long been officially sanctioned. When U.S. secretary of state Madeline Albright visited Pyongyang in 2000, she brought an autographed basketball from Michael Jordan to then ruler Kim Jong-il, the current leader’s father.

Both brothers attended a Swiss boarding school in Berne in the mid 1990’s, where classmates have spoken of both North Korean brothers obsessed with basketball.

Kim Jong-un, who was registered at the school under the name “Pak Un”, worshipped basketball players in the NBA, and one friend who visited his apartment at #10, Kirchstrasse, Liebefeld, recalls that Kim Jong-un had a room filled with NBA memorabilia. “He proudly showed off photographs of himself standing with Toni Kukoc of the Chicago Bulls and Kobe Bryant of the Los Angeles Lakers,” said a 2009 report by the South Korean Chosen Ilbo. “On at least one occasion, a car from the North Korean Embassy drove “Pak Un”—Kim Jong-un–to Paris to watch an NBA exhibition game.”   

Kim Jong-un in his Swiss school yearbook photo

Kim Jong Chol and Kim Jong-un attended the school with another older Korean whose real job was his bodyguard. While Kim Jong Chol and his brother were basketball fanatics who loved the Chicago Bulls, his schoolmates recalled they were not that talented players, and it was their bodyguard who made the school basketball team.

Brother Kim Jong Chol’s alleged school alias: Chol Pak

“Pak Un”—Kim Jong-un–became a different person on basketball court. “A fiercely competitive player,” said classmate Nikola Kovacevic. “He was very explosive. He could make things happen. He was the playmaker.”

Kim also had a collection of Nike sneakers. “We only dreamed about having such shoes. He was wearing them,” recalled Kovacevic, who guessed each pair of basketball shoes cost around US$200.

Another friend, Marco Imhof, who used to play basketball with the Kim brothers, said two Korean women would videotape their basketball games. “It was a bit strange,” Imhof said, but he thought this was just “a Korean thing.”

Kim Jong-Un was reportedly in Switzerland from the ages of 12 to 15 and Kim Jong Col until he was 17, where they were enrolled  as the sons of the chauffeur of the North Korean Embassy, returning to North Korea in 1998.

The International School in Bern said that Kim Jong-chol was registered as “Park Chol” and arrived at ISB in a limousine in the fall 1992, when he was a fourth grader. “Jong-chol was introverted and reserved, and was a basketball fanatic and an ardent fan of the Chicago Bulls in the NBA, just like his younger brother Jong-un. But he himself was no great basketball player, and the person who actually made it to the school basketball team was his bodyguard,” wrote Newsweek in July 2009.

Kenji Fujimoto, who spent 13 years as the Kim family’s personal Japanese Sushi Chef, wrote in a tell all book in 2003 that both Kim Jong-un and his brother, Kim Jong Chol, enjoyed playing basketball, but Kim Jong Un would analyze the game afterwards with teammates: “You should have passed the ball to this guy, you should have shot it then.”

The Japanese Sushi chef quoted Kim Jong-un telling him “I roller blade, play basketball and go jet skiing in the summer, but I wonder how other people live.”

Kim Jong Chol and his Girlfriend in Germany at Eric Clapton Concert 2006

In July 2009, Newsweek magazine reported Kim Jong-chol wrote poetry of a non-nuclear world while a sixth or seventh grader in the mid-’90s in Switzerland, and  the magazine obtained one titled “My Ideal World” from officials at the Swiss school. 

“If I had my ideal world I would not allow weapons and atom bombs any more … Everybody would be happy: no more war, no more dying, no more crying … Only in my ideal world can the people have freedom and live very happily… I would destroy all terrorists with the Hollywood star Jean-Claude Van Damme. I would make people stop taking drugs…”

He wrote another short story called “My Father Was a Ghost,” in which his father haunts him in the form of an unworldly spirit.

The Rodman trip is the handiwork of Vice productions, which make quirky travel documentaries. Smith said that Kim Jong-un’s love of basketball was why the trip was approved. Michael Jordan was first approached but declined, “But Dennis is up for anything and everything, ” Smith said.

Rodman arrives in Pyongyang

“We got invited and we just came over to have some fun,” Rodman said.

In the mid 1970s Kim Jong Il met a dancer, Ko Yong-hui, the daughter of a Japanese professional wrestler who repatriated to Korea in the 1960’s, and she became his fourth wife, giving birth to Kim Jong-chol in 1981 and, in 1983, to Kim Jong-un. Ko Yong-hui died while receiving medical treatment in France in 2004.

In June of 2009, pictures of the brothers obtained from Swiss classmates, including one of a 16 year old Kim Jong-un said to be taken in June 1999, while a junior high school student using the assumed name Park Un posing with his classmates, were published around the world. Reports said that Kim Jong-un was in Berne from the summer of 1996 until January 2001. School officials said Kim Jong-un “came to the teacher’s room one day and said he was going back to his home country tomorrow and did not show up the next day.”

Neither brother was ever mentioned or photographed in official North Korean media until Kim Jong Un was unveiled and named a four star general in September 2010, beginning his succession to replace his father who died in December 2011. After the formal unveiling of Kim Jong Un as heir apparent, the whereabouts of his half brother Kim Jong Nam and brother Kim Jong Chol have been shrouded in secrecy.

But occasional punctures to the carefully choreographed state propaganda have erupted in world media.

My Three Sons

Both of the sons were groomed as successors to the throne and studied in Switzerland, attending the International School of Berne in the mid 1990’s and then Kim Il Sung Military University.

Throughout the 2000’s the two brothers were seen as competitors to the throne. For a number of years Kim Jong-chol was the rumored successor, but his younger brother, Kim Jong-un, was favored by his father, according to several reports.  The 2003 book by the Kim family’s Japanese Sushi chef quoted their father, dictator Kim Jong-il, as saying: “The big one [Jong-chol] has a weak heart and is feminine, but the young one is manly.” Their older half brother, Kim Jong Nam, was slated to be the heir to power until he was detained and deported from Japan in 2001 after being caught with a fake Dominican Republic passport attempting to visit Disneyland in Tokyo.

Throughout the 2000’s, there was wild speculation in the press and among pundits of who would succeed Kim Jong-il, with conflicting reports abounding between the two sons.

Kim Chong-chol  was once photographed with a girlfriend attending an Eric Clapton concert in Germany during the summer of 2006, posing for a commemorative photograph in 2009 with his siblings and members of the ruling leadership, and his last sighting was at the Singapore Eric Clapton concert in February 2011. The 32 year old has made no appearances on official media.

Kenji Fujimoto, the Japanese sushi chef who spent 13 years cooking for Kim Jong-il, wrote that his father considered him “no good because he is like a little girl”

“Jong Chol is impossible because he is too feminine,” Kim Jong Il told other officials, “But Jong Un is exactly like me.”

Kim Jong Un in his Basketball Days in Switzerland

Kim Jong-chol now reportedly works in the ruling Korean Worker’s Party Propaganda and Agitation Department. 

In 2006, in Germany, and 2011 in Singapore, Kim Jong Chol was photographed attending Eric Clapton concerts, sporting a pierced ear.

Japan’s Fuji TV broadcast footage of Kim Jong-chol at four Eric Clapton concerts in Germany in June 2006, and said that he was fascinated with Belgian actor Jean Claude Van Damme.  The footage of Kim Jong-chol showed him attending Clapton concerts in four different German cities–Frankfurt on June 3, Stuttgart on 4th, Leipzig on 6th, Berlin on 7^th—and were confirmed by two American classmates at the Swiss school, who said they were sure that the man in the footage wearing jeans and a leather jacket with a Clapton T-shirt inside taken before the opening of a World Cup Soccer Tournament was Kim Jong Chol.

When the TV reporters asked him “Where are you from?”, he replied “Why?”

Kim Jong-chol was said to have left North Korea in mid-May, travelling through Russia, to France, where he stayed before going to Germany to attend Eric Clapton’s concert.

According to a 2007 Wiki leaks top-secret US embassy cable, top North Korean officials campaigned for a concert by Eric Clapton to perform in Pyongyang as a way to build “good will” between the United States and Pyongyang. “Arranging an Eric Clapton concert in Pyongyang could also be useful, [the redacted intermediary] said, given Kim Jong-Il’s second son’s devotion to the rock legend,” the May 2007 document begins. “As Kim Jong-Il’s second son, Kim Jong-chol, is reported to be a great fan, the performance could be an opportunity to build good will.”

In 2008, the rock music diplomacy apparently began to take shape, and the North Korean embassy in London officially invited him to perform in Pyongyang, with the British music legend reportedly agreeing to do a concert in 2009, which was aborted after North Korea exploded a nuclear bomb.

When photographs appeared of Kim Jong Chol at the Clapton concert in Singapore in 2011, PJ Crowley, the  US State Department spokesman, posted on twitter “”KimJong Il’s son attended an #EricClapton concert in Singapore? Actually, the #DearLeader himself would benefit from getting out more often,”  and posted another tweet that said “Of course, there is nothing preventing #KimJongIl from opening up #NorthKorea so his people could enjoy #Clapton, and maybe get more to eat.”

At a 2011 Eric Clapton Concert in Singapore

In 2008  the Japanese Modern Weekly published a photo album of Kim Jong Chol at the Swiss school, captioned “Chol Park” and his nationality as “North Korean.”

Also in 2008, Zeng Cheng Zhang,  the head of the research department head of Shizong Institute of South-North Relations said : “Kim Jong Chol and a North Korean student named Won Gang Chol attended school together. He is Kim Jong Chol’s friend, secretary, and bodyguard.  He was sent by Pyongyang to be among the security guards.”

According to a 2009 report in a French language Swiss magazine, L’hebdo, the son fo the Korean dictator  “while attending the Swiss International School of Berne used the alias “Pak Chol”.  There was also a classmate who was responsible as his bodyguard named ”Won Gang Chol”.

In fact, the L’hebdo report wrongly mistook the alias used by Kim Jong Chol—“Pak Chol”—applying it to Kim Jong-un, who used the alias “Pak Un”.  On March 23, 2009  Zeng Cheng Zhang  told the Daily NK that “while Kim Jong Chol was at Berne his parental figure was Ko Young-hee’s brother-in-law named Pak.  Hence he used ‘Pak’ as a surname, then added his own name ‘Chol’, thus becoming ‘Pak Chol’.”  Zeng added: This report from L’hebdo mixed up Kim Jong Chol and Kim Jong-un.” Ko Young-hee, who died in 2004, was the 4^th wife of Kim Jong-il and the mother of both Kim Jong-un and Kim Jong Chol.

The report said a Physical Education teacher at the Bern school said “Pak Chol”, or Kim Jong Chol,  “participated in basketball, swimming and other extracurricular activities.  Although he had an introvert personality, he was very strong and aggressive in organized group activities.”

 The other North Korean student who was constantly at Kim Jong Chol’s side, was “Gang Chol.” While the Swiss magazine quoted the teacher saying “Gang Chol’s physique was robust and he was a man of few words.  He often played basketball with (Kim Jong Chol).  Gang Chol and (Kim Jong Chol) were in the same class, although Gang Chol was a little older in age”.

Zhang said “Berne International School gives instruction primarily in English.  Kim Jong-un’s English quickly kept pace and he also studied German and French.  Many people confirm Kim Jong-un actively participated in the school’s group tours.”  And Kim Jong Chol’s principal at Berne was quoted as saying “Kim Jong Chol’s English strength was not bad all through his schooling.  Since instruction is in English, studying should be difficult but he could complete his homework.”