A few things we already know about North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un are that he’s a little temperamental, a little unpredictable, and not a very nice guy in general. We forget that he was just a normal boy who had homework like the rest of us at one point in time, and his old classmates from the Swiss boarding school he attended for two years are here to remind us by sharing what he was like during his formative years.
He really loved Air Jordans
When he was 17 the future leader of North Korea was obsessed with basketball, especially the Bulls. He devoted an entire room in his apartment to memorabilia, and he even spent his free time drawing sketches of Michael Jordan and loved the signature shoes on and off the court.
He had an alias
Kim was registered under the name Pak Un. He said he was the son of a North Korean embassy employee in Bern, the capital of Switzerland. Teachers and students alike all thought it was odd that neither of his parents were ever at school functions, despite the fact that they were supposed to be living close by.
He was an action movie fan
In 2009, Kim’s friends told The Washington Post that he was very socially awkward, especially with the ladies, and when he wasn’t watching basketball he was binging on action movies with his Sony Playstation. He particularly loved Jackie Chan.
He had an entourage
At any point, a little group of Koreans would be following him around as servants or bodyguards, including two guys who filmed his basketball games. His friends thought it was a little weird, but they just thought it was some sort of Korean culture thing.
He was a bragger
Is anyone really surprised by this one? His family tried really hard to keep his identity a secret, but Kim usually had a hard time not sharing that his father was the ruler of North Korea. Classmate Joao Micaelo said he told him about it during a conversation, but Micaelo simply thought he was lying. “Normally the children of people like this, they don’t go to a normal school,” Micaelo said in 2010.
He hated cold spaghetti
Micaelo would often hang out at Kim’s apartment in the Korean Embassy’s headquarters. He said he never really saw any signs of anger until the Embassy chefs gave him lukewarm pasta for dinner. “He spoke to the servants in a manner that was quite sharp,” Micaelo told The Telegraph in 2010. “I was surprised because it was not how he normally was.”
He really liked to wear track suits
In true mobster fashion, Kim liked the comfier things in life. He usually wore Nike track suits to class, and everywhere else.
He wasn’t exactly a valedictorian candidate
He was two years older than his classmates because he wasn’t fluent in German, but he was behind them all academically. He missed 75 days his first year of school and 105 days his second, which led to him flunking natural sciences and barely passing most of his other classes.
He loved Swiss cheese
Speaking of bragging, he loved to talk about how much he could put down in terms of food and drink. He was reportedly so fond of Swiss cheese that he later sent his personal chefs to a French culinary school to try and replicate that medium-hard cheese he loved so much as a student. Could this be the reason why he allegedly gained 90 pounds from 2012 to 2016?
He disappeared
Kim still had part of the school year to go when he vanished in 2000. He left no forwarding address, or any clues that he might be leaving. “We thought he was ill or something and would soon be back,” former classmate Nikola Kovacevic told The Washington Post. “I hope he is a good dictator, but dictators are usually not that good.”
