Meet Kim Jong Un

He's the 29-year-old ruler of North Korea, the world's least known, most dangerous country.

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KCNA / AFP / Getty Images

This picture taken by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on January 1, 2012 shows new North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un (front row-C) posing for photos with soldiers of the Seoul Ryu Kyong Su 105 Guards Tank Division of the Korean People's Army honored with the title of the O Jung Hup-led Seventh Regiment at an undisclosed place in North Korea.

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Whether and to what extent North Korea will change under Kim Jong Un is a matter of greatest consequence to the global balance of power. It's not even clear if he is calling the shots in Pyongyang. And if he is, will--or can--he do what is needed: reform and open up the planet's most hermetic society, detoxify it and usher it into the modern global community? The only sure thing for now is that Kim Jong Un is the least-known and understood leader ever of a nuclear-armed nation.

The Dear Hoopster

Kim Jong Un was Kim Jong Il's third son, the second with a woman described as his consort. Ko Young Hui was an ethnic Korean born in Osaka, Japan, who died in 2004 of breast cancer. She and her family had returned to North Korea in the early '60s, lured like many Korean residents of Japan then by propaganda that the DPRK was a workers' paradise. Back then, Japanese-born Koreans were the lowest of the low in North Korea's quasi-caste system--Kim Il Sung came to power fighting the Japanese, and Pyongyang demonizes Tokyo almost as much as it does Washington. But Ko, who became a dancer after attending a prestigious art school in Pyongyang, caught the eye of the Dear Leader. In 1981 she gave birth to a boy, Kim Jong Chul; Kim Jong Un was born two years later. In North Korea, Ko's birthplace is a closely guarded secret, as is the fact that some of her kin--including a half brother--still live in Japan.

One of the few people outside North Korea with firsthand recollections of Kim Jong Un as a boy is Kenji Fujimoto, the pseudonym of a Japanese chef who served Kim Jong Il, cooking delicacies for the First Family even as much of North Korea starved. A sushi chef in Tokyo, Fujimoto moved to Pyongyang in 1982 to work for a joint-venture event and catering business so he could make more money. (He was paid $5,000 a month.) At a banquet, Kim Jong Il sampled Fujimoto's sushi, liked it, hired him as his personal cook in 1988 and gifted him with a Mercedes-Benz. Fujimoto, who now lives in Nagano, Japan, has written four books on his life in North Korea, including the latest, Successor of the North: Kim Jong Un. He befriended Kim Jong Un one day by repairing the boy's broken kite. Soon, Fujimoto would play with Kim Jong Un and his brother Kim Jong Chul almost daily. Despite having to wear a military uniform and salute his father, Kim Jong Un seemed, at least to Fujimoto, like a relatively normal kid. He enjoyed pickup basketball and, unlike Kim Jong Chul, didn't shrink from being a team captain. He was very competitive, Fujimoto says, encouraging or scolding other players on his team. After a game during which he had screamed at his teammates for their poor play, Kim Jong Un told Fujimoto that perhaps he had been too harsh. The chef replied that he had to be, "otherwise they can't improve." Kim Jong Un "giggled" in response.

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