If you happen to upset Kim Jong Un, that bullfrog-like human above,  it is advisable that you beat a hasty retreat from North Korea, the dictator quickly becoming infamous for his no-nonsense approach to dealing with voices of dissent.

That no-nonsense approach was learned from his father, Supreme Leader Kim Jong Il, who set the trend way back when. His reign was so brutal that Ri Kang, his brother-in-law and Kim Jong Un’s uncle, actually defected to the United States 20 years ago amidst fears that he would be caught up in a power struggle when Jong Il eventually died.

Ri Kang now runs a successful laundry business in the US, although he wasn’t keen to disclose his exact location when talking to Huffington Post:

“I had felt the cruelty of power while spending almost 20 years near the North’s former leader,” Ri said…

Ri and his wife, Ko Yong Sook, left the hermit kingdom and applied for asylum in the U.S. in 1998, 13 years before Kim Jong Il’s death. Ri and Ko had acted as Kim Jong Un’s wards when he studied in Bern, Switzerland, from at least 1998 to 2001. Ri said he had left a goodbye letter to Kim when the couple departed for the U.S. The status of Ri and Ko within the North Korean regime before they defected was unknown.

The couple chose to migrate to the U.S. because Ko Yong Sook believed she could find a cure for her sister’s — Kim Jong Un’s mother’s — breast cancer there. Kim’s mother learned she had breast cancer in 1998 and failed to recover after treatments in Switzerland and France. She died in Paris in 2004.

Last week, Ri and Ko accused three North Korean defectors in Seoul of saying that Ko had called for Kim Jong Un’s half-brother to be expelled from North Korea, and that she had undergone plastic surgery after her own defection. It’s unclear whether the defectors’ statements are true.

It would perhaps be prudent for Ri and Ko to write off going home for Christmas, they may be met with a rather frosty reception.

[source:huffingtonpost]