Remember when Kim Jong Il was the Wackiest World Leader?

Once there was a guy called Kim Jong Il.

the greatest guy in history, world champion of weird.

He was arguably the world’s best-known demigod.

Contrary to popular belief, Kim Jong-il was never the President of North Korea (and Kim Jong Un isn’t now either). Kim Il-sung who (with a bit of Russian help) founded the nation retains the title of Eternal President. At time of writing Kim Il-sung has been president for 64 years, and he’s been dead for 18 of them.

Kim Jong-il, the diminutive dictator with the big hair and platform shoes had over 1,200 official titles which he humbly allowed his adoring people to bestow upon him. Among hundreds of other things Kim Jong-il was…

General Secretary of the Workers Party of Korea, Chairman of the National Defence Commission of North Korea and Supreme Commander of the Korean Peoples’ Army. Of course, coming pu with so many titles required some creativity, and lil’ Kim was also, among other things: Guardian Deity of the Planet, Ever Victorious General, Lodestar of the 21^st Century, Supreme Commander at the Forefront of the Struggle against Imperialism and the United States, and… wait for it…

Eternal Bosom of Hot Love (I shit you not).

It is widely known of course that Kim Jr was the world’s greatest golfer. It was reported by North Korean state media in 1994 (coincidentally, soon after his father’s death) that on his first attempt at the infuriating Scottish game he shot an above average world-record round of 38-under-par, including 11 holes-in-one. To assuage any doubts about this completely reasonable achievement, Kim’s feat was verified by each of his 17 bodyguards (it is safe to assume that his 17 (17!?) bodyguards and their families were not immediately sent to the gulags). If proof that Kim’s sporting genius (you could tell by his physique alone) was not enough, he humbly quit the sport immediately after his astonishing first round, just to give the other, lesser humans a chance.

It was not only at sport that Kim naturally excelled however. He also wrote six operas (as one does), and his official biography states that whilst at university he wrote no less than 1,500 books in three years.

Given his unbelievable prowess at pretty much everything, Kim had plenty of time (while not drinking Cognac – he reportedly consumed almost three bottles of Hennessy each day, at around $650,000 annually) for other achievements in a wide range of disciples. He did, for example, invent the hamburger. He also gave it the mouth-watering name (remember, he was unsurpassed as author and wordsmith), “gogigyeopbbang”, or, “double bread with meat”.

If further proof that he really did love his starving people is required (as if the world-changing “double bread with meat” was not enough), Kim contacted famed German rabbit breeder Karl Szmolinsky in 2006, to send some of his giant rabbits to North Korea to feed the masses. Szmolinsky responded by sending eight giant rabbits to be bred for the North Koreans, and the genius of Kim’s plan to end his nation’s hunger only failed because Kim ate the rabbits instead, for his birthday.

He wasn’t a megalomaniac however, as some people have unfairly characterised him. For example, though Soviet records suggest he may have been responsible for the drowning death of his younger brother, Kim Shu Ra, when Kim Jong-il was five years old, it was never actually proven.

… and just because someone is claimed to be born in a log cabin on a sacred mountain; the birth prophesised by the appearance of a simultaneous double rainbow, the emergence of a new star in the sky, and a swallow (?) (rather than the mundane and ridiculous Soviet records showing he was born in the Siberian village of Vyatskoye in 1941), doesn’t mean the guy is necessarily going to grow up with a few screws loose.

He was an ordinary, everyday dictator. He loved movies. He had 20,000 of them on videotape (as you do). He kidnapped a famous South Korean director, Shin Sang-ok, and his actress wife Choi Eun-hee (as you do) to make a series of movies including the (1985) socialist Godzilla remake, Pulgasari (as you do). IMDB credits Kim Jong-il as Executive Producer of the film.

Just because it is claimed that the weather changed according to Kim Jong-il’s mood at any given time doesn’t mean he wasn’t just your average all-round good bloke with simple tastes. As well as lobster he also enjoyed donkey-meat, and had both airlifted daily to his armoured personal train when he was travelling about.

A kid at heart, Kim loved waterslides (?! – here is a satellite image of one he had built on the roof of one of his Pyongyang mansions), liked looking at things and dropping beats. He was also a shy, reserved kind of guy who was broadcast speaking publicly only once during his public life. The single sentence lasted around five seconds, meaning that just one of Muammar Gaddafi’s wonderfully incoherent, rambling five-hour monologues would have been sufficient for Kim Jong-il to rule North Korea for 61,200 years. What a guy!!