01x06 - Rule Forever

[bunniefuu]

[theme music playing]

[crowd cheering]

[narrator] You've seen history's

most notorious dictators

use this playbook

to navigate their path to power.

And that by following their example,

absolute rule can be yours as well.

Toughness is good

because people respect you.

[g*ns blasting]

[narrator] But by one measure,

even these titans of tyranny fall short.

[man]

The problem that tyrants ultimately face

is that they're really not able

to achieve permanent stability.

[crowd cheering]

[narrator] But what if I told you

the playbook held the key

to keeping your regime alive,

not just through

the end of your days, but beyond.

And you can see

this tyrannical dream in action

in one of the most isolated

and repressive countries on Earth.

North Korea's founding father,

Kim Il Sung, and his son Kim Jong Il

built a system of absolute rule

that is still going strong today

while turning their nation

into a shrine to their family's greatness,

a nuclear power, and a prison state.

They've done the single most important

thing you can do as a tyrant.

Survive in power.

[narrator]Time to reveal the path

to tyranny's greatest

and most elusive goal.

Immortality.

By now, it should be clear to you.

To endure as a tyrant,

you need to do more than build a movement.

You need to be the movement.

It's a hallmark of tyranny

going back to ancient times

that there is this cult of personality

surrounding the tyrant,

which portrays him

as the fount of all wisdom,

the fount of all virtue.

[narrator] And while most cults

of personality die with their leaders,

North Korea's has survived

for three generations.

I look at North Korea, really,

as a theocracy to create that aura

that in fact, they are,

quote, unquote, "God-like."

They believe in them,

much like a belief in religious faith.

[narrator] But to understand

how the Kims pulled this off,

you need to know a few things

about how the dynasty began.

[Jeong-h*] In his 30s, Kim Il Sung is

an anti-Japanese guerrilla fighter

that was quite well-known

fighting for Korean independence.

[man] After the end of World w*r II,

Korea's liberated.

American troops entered Korea

from the south

and Russian troops enter Korea

from the north,

and the man that

the Soviet Union puts into power

in the north is Kim Il Sung.

Kim Il Sung took

a lot of the things from the playbook

that Stalin utilized

for controlling the Soviet Union.

One of the ways Kim Il Sung

kept power was regular purges.

The people around

the core of power are k*lled

or sent to gulags either because they are

thought to be plotting to take power

or just simply as an example

to keep everybody on their toes.

The Korean w*r was fought

between North Korea and China on one side

and South Korea,

the US, and the UN on the other.

It was a stalemate

and they were devastated.

They came to the conclusion

that in conventional warfare,

North Korea is no match

for the United States.

That in fact, they needed something else,

a super deterrent

that would guarantee their survivability.

[narrator] Achieving that

will take more than 50 years

and an ingredient,

besides enriched uranium,

rarely found among tyrannical types.

Teamwork.

[bell dings]

But you can't build an everlasting regime

without a strong foundation

and a plan to keep your population

under total control.

Here's step one.

A great thinker once said,

"A man is only

as faithful as his options."

[bell dings]

So if you wanna rule forever,

it helps to be the only game in town.

[Jeong-h*]

North Korea stands as an example

of quite successfully being able

to isolate its people

from the rest of the world.

In North Korea,

there's no access to information.

The television only has one channel.

Phones are tapped.

[Jean] North Koreans cannot travel freely.

They can't travel

around the country freely,

and they cannot leave the country

without permission.

[narrator] And the original mastermind

of this isolation program?

The father of North Korea, Kim Il Sung,

who, after taking power

with Stalin's help,

is itching to craft

his own customized tyranny.

[Jean] By the 1950s,

Kim Il Sung was starting to chafe

under Soviet influence

and was starting to see

that he was going to need to make a break.

[narrator] And so he does

by creating a brand new

national ideology called Juche.

Juche. It can be translated

very loosely into "self-reliance."

He wanted to say, basically,

"We will do everything by ourselves."

[Jean] Koreans have been facing domination

from outside forces for centuries.

The Chinese, the Japanese.

Juche was created

to force them to think

about fending for themselves

and to turn that isolationism

into a source of pride.

[narrator] According to Juche principles,

cooperating with other nations

would destroy North Korea's sovereignty,

and the only way

for the nation to survive

is to unite under

the Great Leader, Kim Il Sung.

Juche has been used, very strategically,

as a way to justify and explain

why they're so isolated.

The isolation is an effective tool

to prevent popular discontent

about the state of the country.

So to open up North Korea

to this kind of flow of information,

I think would be quite devastating.

[narrator] See? Smart move.

Isolating your nation is a strong step

towards a long and healthy tyranny.

But we're aiming higher,

to build the regime without end.

To do that, you're going to need

a good succession plan,

and this one is playbook approved.

Dynastic rule is great for leaders

and it's also great for the coalition,

the supporters around the leader.

It's about continuity.

The coalition have reasons

to stay more loyal because we might say

"The apple doesn't drop

far from the tree."

[narrator] But for modern-day tyrants,

building a family dynasty is a tough trick

which few have been able to pull off.

Not S*ddam with his boys or Gaddafi.

How about Stalin's kids?

Vasily, Svetlana, Yakov, or Artyom?

Ever heard of them? Me neither.

[buzzer honks]

As North Korean alpha leader,

Kim Il Sung's cult of personality

continues to grow.

He becomes determined

that his regime will be the exception.

He had this idea of replicating

somewhat of a modern-day monarchy

for the rule of North Korea.

[narrator] But even monarchies can

get messy when it comes to succession.

With royal families in Korean history,

you often had a king

with multiple consorts

and multiple potential heirs,

and that was true

with Kim Il Sung as well.

[narrator] That leaves the leader

with a very important decision.

Which kid to choose.

[Jean] He had a son, Kim Pyong Il,

who was seen as a potential heir.

[Paul] He was the favorite son.

He was the son

of Kim Il Sung's second wife,

who was in greater favor

than his first wife, who had passed away.

[narrator] While firstborn son,

Kim Jong Il is left out in the cold.

But North Korea's

future ruler number two has big plans.

[Paul] If you're born into that family,

you sort of develop from a very young age

a sense of "k*ll or be k*lled,"

"dog-eat-dog" world.

You either have all the power,

or you have none,

and there's nothing in between.

[narrator] To prove his claim, Kim Jong Il

would need to find the right moment

and make it count.

In the wake of the latest

purge of unreliable officials,

the big boss, Kim Il Sung,

has several openings to fill,

including in the Propaganda Ministry,

charged with North Korea's

most important pursuit.

Glorifying the Great Leader.

Kim Il Sung pays a visit

to North Korea's film studio

with his 25-year-old son,

Kim Jong Il, by his side.

He berates the studio workers

for their ineffective propaganda films,

which are betraying their nation.

He dares them to have the courage

to overhaul the studio

and restore it back to glory.

When no one responds,

Kim Jong Il volunteers

to take up his father's challenge.

[Paul] This is one of the vital incidents

of Kim Jong Il's rise that,

as a good, dutiful son,

when there was a moment of need,

he volunteered, boldly,

even though he was young.

[narrator] Kim Jong Il is immediately

named Cultural Arts Director

and begins producing

the film Sea of Blood,

an epic tale

of North Korean self-reliance.

In it, a 1930s family suffers

under Japanese occupation

before heroically fighting back,

based on a story by Kim Il Sung himself.

It premieres to rave reviews.

Within two years,

Kim Jong Il becomes head

of the entire Propaganda Ministry,

setting him off on his course,

from lost boy to heir apparent.

[Paul] By 1974, even though

he won't take power for the next 20 years,

it is communicated to the party that,

yeah, this is the guy.

[male voice]

Kim Jong Il's royalty is unfailing.

In short, he's the incarnation of royalty.

[narrator] In securing his rule

and naming a successor,

Kim Il Sung did his part

to position the dynasty for success.

But before the understudy

can take the stage,

Kim Jong Il will need

to chart his own course

to grow the family business.

And when you don't have the help you need,

sometimes you just need

to take matters into your own hands.

[Paul] Kim Jong Il developed kidnapping

as a state tool

that he wasn't shy about using personally

if he felt he wanted someone,

for whatever reason, in the country.

[Jean] Kim Jong Il wanted

to train his spies to speak Japanese,

so he kidnapped Japanese citizens.

In some cases,

they were just plucked off the beach

and disappeared.

And for years,

their families had no idea

that they were in North Korea.

[narrator] But for Kim Jong Il,

rising star of North Korean cinema,

his nation had a staffing issue

that was even more troubling.

In the 1970s, Kim Jong Il had made films

that were successful in North Korea,

but were still

kind of made fun of around the world.

[speaking Korean]

[Paul] Kim Jong Il recognized

that every form of power

is based on stories, and his love

for storytelling and for narrative

could be put to use

to try and perpetuate the regime.

[narrator]

Looking to crack Hollywood's secrets,

Kim watches films day and night.

[Paul] He'd created this huge

worldwide bootleg system

to provide him with every film

that came out subtitled and printed

and ready for him to watch.

And he would keep all of these films

in a building in Pyongyang

no one could access.

[narrator] But Kim Jong Il

quickly realizes his biggest problem.

To make A movies, you need A-list talent.

So what's this tactic about again?

Right, kidnapping.

So now it's a question about who to grab.

[Jean] Kim Jong Il staged the kidnapping

of one of South Korea's

most beloved actresses,

Choi Eun-hee, in Hong Kong,

and somehow lured her ex-husband,

the revered film director, Shin Sang-ok,

to look for her,

and they entrapped him as well.

[Paul] He keeps them imprisoned

without seeing one another

for… five to six years

until their resolve is essentially broken.

And then he brings them back together.

He announces publicly

that they've happily joined

the Democratic People's Republic of Korea.

[narrator] Over the next three years,

Shin and Choi produce 17 films

under Kim Jong Il's watchful eye.

He basically forced them to create

a film industry, um, in North Korea.

[roaring]

[crowd clamoring]

[yells]

Shin's films have to fit

Kim's propaganda purposes,

but he's also allowed

to break the rules a little bit,

and it actually enhances Kim's power,

because North Koreans

now have a reason to see these films.

They are unlike anything else

they've seen in 40 years,

but that still serve the purpose

of developing the narrative of the nation.

[narrator] But Kim Jong Il, still just

the heir apparent, has a problem.

That national narrative

is currently based around his father,

the eternal divine

and still living leader, Kim Il Sung.

Quite a challenge.

How do you make your case

to succeed a god?

Pity, poor Kim Jong Il.

He's doing such a great job elevating

his father's cult of personality,

it's leaving him little time

to develop his own.

[machine g*n fires]

Kim Jong Il wasn't the gregarious,

charismatic, outgoing, people-person

that his father was.

He was very behind the scenes.

Kim Jong Il needed to build

a narrative for North Korea

past its first leader.

That would give him legitimacy.

[machine g*n firing]

[narrator] And that plan begins here,

at North Korea's most sacred site,

Mount Paektu.

Legend has it,

this is where Korean civilization began

with the birth of the God-king, Dangun.

[Jean] For the Kims,

so much of their family lore

is built around Mount Paektu.

[narrator]

According to Kim Il Sung's official bio,

before his nation achieved independence,

his forces battled the Japanese

from a base camp on Paektu's slopes,

while most experts place it

some 200 miles away in Manchuria.

To strengthen his case

as heir to the throne,

Kim Jong Il adds himself

to the family myth.

Kim Jong Il was born in 1941 in Russia,

but he couldn't have been born there.

He had to be a son of the country,

so now the story was written

that he was born on Mount Paektu.

[narrator] In the official account

spread through the media, books,

songs and taught in schools,

Kim Jong Il's birth

was foretold by a swallow,

-who descended from Heaven.

-[swallow crying]

The winter skies parted to reveal

the brightest double rainbow ever seen.

A new star appeared in the sky.

Kim Il Sung's soldiers were so moved

that they burst into joyful song.

[vocalizing]

[narrator] But why stop there?

[Paul] As Kim Jong Il rose to power,

he would have people rewrite

his narrative of his life as it went.

It was very important

that he seemed to have superhuman powers.

So progressively, these stories

become crazier and crazier.

[narrator] The North Korean government

begins issuing press releases

sharing some important "facts"

about the rising leader.

Like that he learned to walk

at three weeks old

and speak at eight weeks.

That he can control the weather.

Ingeniously authored 1500 books.

That the first time he played golf,

-he made 11 holes in one.

-[crowd cheering]

He's such a perfect physiological specimen

that he doesn't produce

any form of human waste,

so he has no need for a toilet.

-[toilet gurgling]

-[snaps fingers]

And in the final gift to humankind,

he also invented the hamburger.

Laugh if you want, but with the playbook,

there's always a method to the madness.

[Jean] That mythology is designed

to enforce the idea

that Kim Jong Il has

a divine right to rule.

[cheering]

[Jeong-h*] If you think of it

from a logical perspective,

it doesn't really make any sense,

but for a North Korean,

um, it's not a question of logic.

Uh, really it's a question of faith.

[narrator] With eternal leader

Kim Il Sung ailing

and Kim Jong Il

nearing his date with destiny,

that faith is about to be tested.

[machine g*n fires]

The 1990s was

a kind of a combination of bad luck.

Bad crops, mismanagement,

so it's basically the perfect storm

that created this,

uh, collapse of the system

that led to widespread famine.

[narrator] That's the last thing you need

when you're racing

to solidify your dynasty.

But what separates

tyranny's legends from losers

is they don't let problems

bring them down.

When you're looking to rule forever,

hunger can have its advantages.

[Alastair] Poor, hungry,

isolated people are no threat to you.

Starving people aren't going to give food

to rebels to fight the government.

They're too weak to fight back.

It's a sad reality,

but starving people works.

[narrator] Like it or not,

the results speak for themselves.

Stalin took advantage

of a deadly famine in the Ukraine

to crush any thoughts of independence

and help keep the Soviet Union intact,

while tens of millions dead in China

as a result

of Mao Zedong's Great Leap Forward

did little to weaken his hold

over the nation.

And Ethiopian dictator

Mengistu Haile Mariam

weathered his country's

devastating famine in the early 1980s,

ruling for another eight years.

[Jean] The Kims, they've never been able

to feed their own people

despite the mythology

that they had to maintain

that they could do it on their own.

North Korea had relied for so many decades

on the Soviet umbrella in terms of

where they were getting supplies.

[narrator] But in the early '90s,

the Soviet Union falls apart,

and North Korea's economy

quickly follows suit.

[Jean] That just started

this cascading effect

of tragedy after tragedy.

Hundreds of thousands

of North Koreans starved to death,

and those are conservative estimates.

It's probably a lot higher.

I would identify that period

as the lowest of lows.

[narrator] So naturally,

this is the exact moment

when North Korea's

seemingly immortal first leader,

Kim Il Sung, finally decides to check out.

[speaking Korean]

The death of Kim Il Sung in 1994,

uh, for the majority of North Koreans,

uh, was the most devastating event.

You see, you know, people in mourning.

So it's not just mourning.

It's almost like the Messiah had died.

[narrator] And even worse, Kim Jong Il is

seeing his dream of a perpetual dynasty

hanging by a thread.

[Suki] How do you survive politically

after millions of citizens died,

and there's nothing to eat?

Kim Jong Il goes back to storytelling.

He needed to perpetuate this idea

that the country was under threat

from aggression from the United States.

And so it was

tapping back into the Korean w*r

and bringing it into the present.

[narrator] And a country at w*r

needs to stick together.

[Paul] He starts propaganda campaigns

whereby people are told

they should choose

to eat only one or two meals a day

to celebrate Kim Il Sung

and the guerrilla fighters.

[narrator] Inspiring sacrifice is

all part of the job.

What you do in your free time

is your own business.

[Jean] Kim Jong Il had excessive,

expensive tastes.

He spent, I believe,

more than $800,000 a year

just on cognac.

So while his countrymen are allegedly

selling baby flesh in markets,

Kim Jong Il's got

multiple villas and private chefs,

and he's importing liquor by the tons.

He's living

the most luxurious life possible

for him and a very small group of people.

While letting his countrymen die.

[narrator] Yet, despite the Dear Leader's

skill in making hunger work for him,

the Kim family's eternal regime

is still far from secure.

[Paul] Everybody was predicting

that Kim Jong Il was inexperienced,

less charismatic,

less godly than his father

and that sooner or later

he would have to fail,

the regime would have to fail.

[narrator] But Kim Jong Il is

about to prove the doubters wrong

by unleashing the playbook's final

and most devastating tactic

that can turn a starving nation

into an unstoppable force.

A sad truth of becoming a tyrant

is that chances are

you'll someday

have a run-in with meddling foreigners

who think the world

would be better off without you.

We've lost

a lot of Hall of Famers this way.

Like S*ddam Hussein,

deposed by a US-led invasion in 2003,

captured by American forces,

and ex*cuted three years later.

Adolf Hitler's reign ended

with the Allies encircling Berlin in 1945,

leading the once-mighty Fuhrer

to commit suicide in his bunker.

And let's not forget Muammar Gaddafi,

whose demise was sped along

by a NATO bombing campaign in 2011.

To avoid falling

in their unfortunate footsteps,

nothing but

the ultimate deterrent will do.

[choral music plays]

The Kims call their nuclear weapons

their "treasured sword."

It will protect them.

Nuclear weapons figure so heavily

into the strategy

of how to keep North Korea intact

with the Kim family at the helm.

[narrator] Okay, so how do you become

a nuclear power?

To start, you need world-class scientists,

a few hundred pounds of uranium,

a processing facility,

and a boatload of cash.

Seems simple enough? It's not.

To make nuclear weapons,

you need to run your uranium

through thousands

of specialized centrifuges

that are tightly controlled

for obvious reasons.

The process takes months to complete

and can be slowed by accidents.

Or sabotage.

Then you need to figure out delivery.

You could try

dropping them from airplanes,

firing short-range missiles,

using submarines,

or the superpower weapon of choice,

intercontinental ballistic missiles.

And to be sure your weapon works,

you're going to have

to conduct some tests,

which the world will surely notice

and do everything they can to stop you

before your program is operational.

The race is on.

Like everything in North Korea,

the Kims' nuclear pursuits

are a family affair.

[Jeong-h*] Before Kim Il Sung died,

he in fact began

to stockpile nuclear materials.

[narrator] That's step one.

But after nearly four decades

of research and development,

the program never fully

got off the ground.

[Jeong-h*] When he died,

there was no nuclear weapons,

so Kim Jong Il, um, essentially inherits

the nuclear program his father started.

[narrator]

Kim Jong Il's determined to make

his father's nuclear dreams come true.

But with North Korea's economy in crisis,

he doesn't exactly have

boatloads of cash to spare.

So he's going to have

to get entrepreneurial.

[Jeong-h*] So North Korea was able

to finance this nuclear program

through illicit trade,

counterfeit products,

drugs, smuggling, money laundering.

So whatever ill*gal methods was

available there, North Korea has done it.

[narrator] In 2009, Kim Jong Il

achieves step number two.

North Korea conducts

a successful underground nuclear test

and also fires a series of missiles

that land in the waters near Japan.

But the family's great enemy

in the west, America,

remains frustratingly out of reach.

[woman] We had spent,

during the Clinton Administration,

quite a lot of time trying to figure out

what the North Koreans were doing.

Kim Dae-Jung,

who was the president of South Korea,

said to me, "This man is not crazy."

"He's very smart, and you need

to see him from that perspective."

[Jeong-h*] But if we look at exactly

what Kim Jong Il was thinking,

he had to pursue nuclear weapons

as a way of safeguarding,

um, the, uh, country,

and that event actually went on

until 2011 when he-- when he died.

[reporter] Under an intense snowstorm,

thousands of North Koreans

give their last farewell to Kim Jong Il.

For the funeral procession

carried the Dear Leader's coffin.

[narrator] But the great thing

about an eternal regime,

death is a mere speed bump.

Time for Kim Jong Il's son,

Kim Jong Un, to pick up the baton.

When Kim Jong Un takes over,

he actually accelerates

the testing of nuclear weapons

and the testing

of intercontinental m*ssile technologies.

[narrator] And 64 years

after the end of the Korean w*r,

Kim Jong Un finally finishes the job.

[Jeong-h*] In 2017,

they conducted their nuclear test.

They claimed to be a hydrogen b*mb

capable of hitting the United States.

[narrator] Grandpa would be so proud.

The regime he set up to rule forever

now has the ultimate safety net.

North Korea is a nuclear power.

That gives them the tools

by which the Kim family

can now continue

to perpetuate their power,

their authority,

and succession in the future.

This system, it exists on and on and on.

That's maybe what's different

about this dictatorship.

It just, it won't die.

"The Great Leader" dictatorship

continued on.

[narrator] There it is, as simple as that.

With this playbook in hand,

you can go from broke outcast

to absolute ruler.

Crush all rivals in your path,

dominate your people's bodies and minds,

create your perfect society,

and with an assist

from the ultimate weapon, rule forever.

Come on, what's stopping you?

What kind of person can be a tyrant?

I'm going to give

a very depressing answer.

Anybody can be a tyrant.

[narrator] Ready to take your shot?

[blasting]

[theme music playing]