Anna Fifield su Politico ripercorre in un resoconto i quattro anni dell’adolescenza di Kim Jong Un, trascorsi in Svizzera sotto copertura a Berna. Il futuro leader della Corea del Nord era infatti iscritto prima a una scuola privata poi a una piccola scuola pubblica di lingua tedesca.
L’accurata ricostruzione di quegli anni da parte di Anna Fifield pubblicata da Politico è un adattamento del suo recente libro, Il grande successore: il destino divinamente perfetto del brillante compagno Kim Jong Un.

When he was announced as his father’s heir in 2010, some analysts hoped that Kim Jong Un, having spent four years in Switzerland during his formative teenage years, would be a more open-minded leader of North Korea. That he might embark on reforms that, while not turning his family’s Stalinist state into a liberal democracy, might make it a little less repressive. After all, in many ways, Kim’s time in Switzerland reveals an adolescence and education that was not so different from a typical Western one: There was a love of basketball, a curriculum that required him to learn about Martin Luther King, Jr., and Nelson Mandela and a wardrobe packed with brand-name tracksuits (jeans were still out of the question).

Kim Jong Un era ancora un bambino quando partì per Berna nell’estate del 1996 per raggiungere suo fratello maggiore Kim Jong Chol a scuola. Aveva già viaggiato sia in Europa che in Giappone, ma questa era la prima volta che viveva fuori dal suo paese d’origine. Tutti i membri della famiglia avevano un’identità accuratamente costruita per nascondere chi erano veramente.

L’articolo descrive l’appartamento che il regime nordcoreano aveva acquistato, insieme ad altri cinque, per la famiglia e i dignitari che vivevano in Svizzera. E racconta come Kim Jong Un fosse ossessionato dal gioco del basket, uno sport dove rivelava il suo spirito competitivo: molto concentrato e aggressivo, quando perdeva imprecava e sbatteva la testa nel muro.

In quegli anni la madre si ammalò e gli zii chiesero asilo politico negli Stati Uniti, per poi trasferirsi in America Centrale dove aprirono un negozio di lavanderia. Gli anni passati in Svizzera invece di cambiarlo, facendolo sentire una persona normale come tutti gli altri, secondo l’autrice lo convinsero a perpetuare il sistema che aveva trasformato lui, suo padre e suo nonno in divinità.

But these formative years, of which this is the most complete account to date, might have had the opposite effect on the future leader. Kim’s years in Switzerland, in which he was enrolled in both a tony private school and a small German-speaking public school, would have taught him that if he were to live in the outside world, he would have been entirely unremarkable. A nobody. Far from convincing him to change his country, these years would have shown him the necessity of perpetuating the system that had turned him and his father and grandfather into deities. The years also reveal some of the same interests and temperamental characteristics that would come to define the man who is the biggest foreign-policy thorn in the United States’ side. For instance, the same Kim Jong Un who had his uncle and half-brother killed was also known as a teenager for lashing out at his classmates when they spoke in German, a language that he had struggled to master himself.