[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.
[guns 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-Ho] 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 War 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 killed
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 War 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-Ho] 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 Saddam 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 "kill or be killed," "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 gun 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 gun 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-Ho] 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 gun 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 War
and bringing it into the present.
[narrator] And a country at war 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 Saddam Hussein, deposed by a US-led invasion in 2003,
captured by American forces, and executed 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-Ho] 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-Ho] 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-Ho] So North Korea was able to finance this nuclear program
through illicit trade, counterfeit products,
drugs, smuggling, money laundering.
So whatever illegal 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-Ho] 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 missile technologies.
[narrator] And 64 years after the end of the Korean War,
Kim Jong Un finally finishes the job.
[Jeong-Ho] In 2017, they conducted their nuclear test.
They claimed to be a hydrogen bomb 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]