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Saturday 5 July 2008

From despot’s PR man to Surrey salesman

Christopher Michael talks to Jean-Baptiste Kim, a former spokesman for Kim Jong-Il’s tyranny in Pyongyang, who grasped the truth about the regime

The idea was a worldwide hit and Kim’s DPRK government superiors became increasingly excited. They were shocked by the reaction, he says, because they had no idea how popular the internet was. So Kim became a VIP and part of this new super-VIP treatment was unchaperoned travel. ‘Usually, I was guarded by the army,’ says Kim. But now, in order to find a suitable venue for Rock for Peace, he was allowed to make his own way through the countryside, without an armed escort. This was the government’s big mistake. Kim visited parts of the country he’d never been to before. Parts that foreigners are not allowed to visit — he won’t say where. ‘Ordinary places, with ordinary people. Small towns, small farms.’ What he saw shocked him beyond recovery. ‘The life of ordinary people was horrible,’ he says. ‘Miserable. I can’t ever forget what I’ve seen. People were wearing clothes that hadn’t been washed in years. It was October, and kids were walking around without shoes. There was a small man, about my age — and he was no taller than my little daughter. And the reason? Because there was nothing to eat.’ Kim felt disgusted, and also betrayed. ‘I realised that in Pyongyang, I had only seen very select people so of course they looked fine. They were high society. They ate well and their bodies were healthy, they had nice apartments. But further out, in the countryside, it’s just unbelievable. I’ll never forget.

‘I was once proud of my fatherland, of our army,’ says Kim. ‘Then I went to the small villages and what I saw I’ll never forget. I saw that I had been an idiot and a coward. There was an unforgiveable gap between the rulers and the people.’

So Jean-Baptiste Kim saw the regime for what it was and decided he’d had enough. He wrote a statement to explain his actions, in which he called himself ‘one of the most hypocritical figures in modern Korean history’. In his statement he explicitly rejected the North’s doctrine of sacrificing the individual for the state and expressed deep regret for the decade he’d spent cheerleading for Kim Jong-Il. ‘I was the evil painter who painted fake images over the true phenomenon.’ And he cancelled Rock for Peace. From now on, he says, he would be a simple man. He would sell mobile phones in Surrey.

‘I never explained properly to the government why I left,’ he says. ‘If I had told the truth, who knows? They will kill me.’

Kim looks around at a display stand with dozens of mobile phones, posters for T-Mobile, an Asiana Airlines clock. ‘I have not given any interviews until now, and this is my last one,’ he says. ‘After this, I want to forget everything. The past is meaningless. I’ve mostly forgotten it already.’

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