In a rare and remarkable interview posted on YouTube, the teenage grandson of late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il spoke of his wish to "make things better" for the Korean people.
During the interview conducted at the school in Bosnia where he studies, Kim Han-sol, nephew of current leader Kim Jong-un, talked of his hopes for the unification of the Korean Peninsula.
Sporting wide, black-frame glasses, two studs in his left ear and a fashionable haircut, Kim referred to his uncle as "a dictator."
Born in Pyongyang in 1995, Kim described a lonely early childhood, spent mostly in the home of his mother's family -- isolated from the grandfather he never actually met and who died in December last year.
"I always wanted to meet him, because I just wanted to know what kind of person he is," Kim said.
"I was actually waiting for him... until he passed away, hoping he would come find me, because I really didn't know if he knew that I existed," he said.
Kim, now 17, is the son of Kim Jong-il's eldest son Kim Jong-nam, who fell out of favor with his father following a botched attempt in 2001 to secretly enter Japan using a fake passport and visit Disneyland.
The family has since lived in virtual exile, mainly in the Chinese territory of Macau.
"My dad was not really interested in politics," Kim said, when asked why his father was passed over for the dynastic succession in North Korea in favor of his younger brother.
"I don't really know why he became a dictator," Kim said of his uncle Kim Jong-un. "It was between him and my grandfather."
The interview was conducted in English for a Finnish television channel by Elisabeth Rehn, a former U.N. undersecretary general and special rapporteur for human rights in Bosnia-Hercegovina.
"When I was growing up in North Korea, I wasn't really aware of what was going on there," Kim said.
"I've always dreamed that one day I would go back and make things better and make it easier for the people there," he added. (AFP)