North Korea leadership: 'My happy days at school with North Korea's future leader'

To his fellow pupils, he was a pleasant, if unremarkable classmate: a quiet teenager, dedicated to the typical adolescent passions of computer games, designer trainers and action movies. Pak Un, who enrolled at a state school in Liebefeld, Switzerland, back in 1997, seemed like just another shy new boy - the son, his class was told, of an Asian ambassador posted to the nearby Swiss capital, Bern.

Yet this Tuesday, some 13 years from the warm September day when he first walked into their class, his former schoolmates may find themselves with the ultimate "Friends Reunited" story to tell. For at a grandiose ceremony some 5,000 miles away, Pak Un, real name Kim Jong-un, is expected to be anointed as the leader-in-waiting of North Korea, the world's last Stalinist state.

Unbeknown to them, their classmate was in actual fact the youngest son of Kim Jong-il, the ageing, tyrannical Supreme Leader who took over from his own father, Kim Il-sung, in 1994. Now, as the only hereditary dynasty in communist history is poised to transfer power yet again, Kim Jong-un is tipped to be named heir apparent at a rare general conference of North Korea's Workers' Party.

Still only 27, the tall, gangling youngster will shoulder a fearful, apocalyptic legacy. As well as the power of an absolute ruler, he will assume control of the nuclear button that is primed to launch missiles at the republic's historic enemy, South Korea. Which makes it all the more intriguing that his father decided that the best place for his son to be educated was the Hessgut Schule, a state-run, German-speaking establishment in the suburb of Liebefeld outside Berne.

In a manner typical of the hermit state's secretive style, Jong-un spent nearly four years here without even his teachers being any the wiser as to his real identity. The only odd thing they noticed was that on parents' days, it was always an embassy official, rather than his mother and father, who would turn up for briefings on his progress.

But despite his hidden pedigree, the man who will now wield god-like authority in his home country is remembered fondly by his fellow pupils - none more so than Joao Micaelo, the son of a Portuguese immigrant couple whom Jong-un sat next to on his first day in class. The pair bonded over their own difficulties in learning German fluently, and went on to forge a close friendship as they progressed to Hessgut's sister middle school, the Steinholz Schule.

"Back then I'd never really heard of North Korea, so I never thought anything of it," Joao, who is now a chef, told The Sunday Telegraph last week. "To me he just seemed like an ordinary teenager, a fairly quiet guy who never really talked much about his home country or politics."

Ironically for someone whose family is known for their anti-Western rants, Jong-un's consuming passion was a mainstay of American culture - basketball. Both keen players, he and Joao would spend much time watching televised professional games of America's NBA league, and following the career of its star player, Michael Jordan.

At Jong-un's apartment at the embassy's living quarters at 10 Kirchstrasse, a quiet Liebefeld street with two pizza joints, the pair would also pass time with computer games and movies. Jong-un's favourites were Jackie Chan and James Bond films, although if some of 007's more colourful adversaries bore a passing resemblance to certain people back home, he never mentioned it.

Indeed, on the one occasion that Jong-un did confide to his young friend about who his father was, Joao dismissed it as adolescent fantasy. "One day, he did actually say to me, 'My father is the Leader of North Korea', but I just thought he was making it up. Then a few days later he said he showed me a photo of him with this guy who I now realise was Kim Jong-il. But I knew his father was a diplomat, so I thought it was just some photo from a government event they had attended.

"Otherwise, he hardly ever talked about his home life, although he did play the North Korean music a lot, in particular the national anthem. I can still remember it now."

That same plodding ditty, which glorifies "a wise people and a brilliant culture", is likely to be blasting out again on Tuesday, when thousands of party cadres meet in the North Korea's drab capital, Pyongyang.

Such is the level of paranoia within the ruling elite that his name has never even been officially mentioned as a potential successor. But state-sanctioned poems and songs have been released, praising without name, "the young general", and dwelling on the importance of "footsteps" – a metaphor for the familial transfer of power.

Party officials have also reportedly been giving out a commemorative book featuring pictures of Kim Jong-il and his son on a recent trip to China when he was introduced, again without any public fanfare, to leaders of the North’s only foreign ally and benefactor.

So secretive are the machinations in Pyongyang that many analysts believe Kim Jong-un’s new role will not even be formally announced at the meeting.

But Kongdan Oh, a North Korea specialist at the Institute of Defence Analyses, a Pentagon-funded research centre, predicted that the most likely post for the “hidden crown prince” is deputy director of the Orwellian-sounding Bureau of Organisation and Movement.

Despite its mundane name, it is the party’s most powerful department – “responsible for hiring, firing, purging and executing”, she said. It is the same agency where his father was blooded in party politics.

She emphasised the significance of Kim Jong-il’s recent trip “down family lane” to his father’s wartime base in China. “He clearly wants to protect the family legacy and he feels he can only trust his son to do that,” she said.

Jerrold Post, one of the world’s top political psychologists who profiled dictators and tyrants for the CIA for 21 years, similarly views Kim Jong-il’s determination to promote his son as fuelled by his desire to perpetuate the family legacy, at all costs.

“Kim Jong-il has been very focused on sustaining and promoting the reputation and legend of his father,” Dr Post told The Sunday Telegraph. “It’s like being the son of God and then looking for someone to take over that role from you.”

But rare signs of public discontent are emerging from North Korea over news of the likely dynastic succession. Recent defectors and exile media organizations such as Free North Korea Radio and the Daily NK describe growing dismay and alarm within the ranks of the Workers’ party and security forces as the name of Kim Jong-un has been gradually rolled out.

The reports are fuelling fears that the country and its nuclear arsenal will be engulfed by a dangerous power struggle by rival regime factions, some of whom want to introduce Chinese-style political reforms.

John Bolton, a former US diplomat who faced down North Korean nuclear brinkmanship as President George W Bush’s ambassador to the United Nations, questioned whether Jong-un would be accepted by the veteran military chiefs.

“Kim Jong-il may want his son to succeed him but there’s no guarantee that he can ensure a stable transition,” he told The Sunday Telegraph. “This is a military dictatorship and in a country where the elite are so fragile and the population so desperate, it’s the people with guns who rule.”.

Assuming a family succession does take place, Jong-un is the only one seen as fit for the role. His oldest brother, a gambler and playboy, has been banished abroad, while the middle son has been dismissed as too "effeminate" for a leadership job. But it also means handing power to a young man with no experience of statecraft, and whose personality remains an enigma to Western governments tasked with bringing Pyongyang in from the cold.

A senior US diplomat, who has been briefed on the Jong-un by the CIA, said: “We know almost nothing about him and without a high level defector, that is not likely to change for some time.

"The danger is that Kim Jong-un - or whoever takes over for him - will try to win complete power before he is ready. That could lead him into some kind of military adventurism.

“The son has a very difficult job. He must quickly win the allegiance of the varied factions including the military. If he fails to do this before his father dies there is the possibility of instability and a coup on the death.”

With so little known about Jong-un's inner psyche, the recollections of his former pupils may well have been noted by Western intelligence agencies, not that they offer a great deal to go on. Even the sharpest CIA mind-reader, for example, might have trouble making much of the disclosure that Jong-un's favourite Western pop song was Brother Louie, by the German-electro popsters Modern Talking. Analysts might, though, be interested in the tale told by Marco Imhof, another of Jong-un's basketball buddies, about how he showed unexpected flashes of temper with staff at his house in Kirchstrasse, who acted as cooks and personal chauffeurs.

"I remember once, we were given some spaghetti to eat, and it was served rather cold, and he spoke to the servants in a manner that was quite sharp," Mr Imhof said. "I was surprised because it was not how he normally was."

All the same, his friends also retain a note of sympathy for Jong-un, whose brief spell in their company may end up being among his few carefree years. Even then, he lived a restricted life compared to his peers, never going out at night and missing out on parties. A video of a school music class he attended at the Hessgut Schule, seen by The Sunday Telegraph, shows him looking somewhat uncomfortable as he bangs a tambourine.

He was also shy around girls, although he did once show Joao a picture of a pretty North Korean teenager he described as his girlfriend back home.

Then, without warning, he departed from the school mid-way through his fourth year at school, and was not heard of again until last year, when Asian reporters tracked down Joao and Marco and revealed their friend's real identity.

"I was amazed when I heard he would become the next leader," said Joao, who now hopes to catch his friend's coronation on the news. "But his time in our school was probably an important one for him, and hopefully he learned many things. I think he will be a bit cooler than his father."

Additional reporting by Bill Lowther in Washington