N Korean leader’s nephew labels him a ‘dictator’

S KOREA: Kim Jong-Il’s teenage grandson has labelled his uncle, North Korea’s new leader Kim Jong-Un, a “dictator” in an interview that offers a rare glimpse into the world’s most secretive ruling dynasty.

During the interview, conducted at the school in Bosnia where he studies, Kim Han-Sol, 17, spoke of his desire to “make things better” for the Korean people.

Sporting wide, black-frame glasses, two studs in his left ear and a fashionable haircut, Kim also talked of his close friendships with South Korean and US students and his hopes for the Korean peninsula’s reunification.

Born in Pyongyang in 1995, Kim described a lonely early childhood, spent mostly in the home of his mother’s family -- isolated from the grandfather he never actually met and who died in December last year.

“I always wanted to meet him, because I just wanted to know what kind of person he is,” Kim said in the interview, which aired on Finnish television and was posted on YouTube.

“I was actually waiting for him... until he passed away, hoping he would come find me, because I really didn’t know if he knew that I existed,” he said.

AFP