My name is Daniel. I was an English teacher in Seoul, South Korea, and am now a writer and scholar who has written a couple of books including South Korea: Our Story by Daniel Nardini.

                            According to official North Korean propaganda, Kim Jong-il was born in a secret military camp near Mount Paektu. It is clear why this myth was created---to create the impression that he is of "divine" origin and to give the impression that he was born in a sacred place in Korea. Nothing could be further from the truth. According to former Soviet archives, Kim Jong-il was in fact born in the former Soviet Union. He was born in 1941 in the village of Vyatskoye, near the city of Khabarovsk. His given name was Yuri Irsenovich Kim (pretty Russian sounding!), and at the time his father Kim Il-sung was commander of the 1st Battalion of the Soviet 88th Brigade. This battalion was made-up of Chinese and Korean exiles. The Japanese Imperial Army had been so thorough in wiping out the Korean guerrilla forces in Manchuria that Kim Il-sung had to flee for his life and ended up in the Soviet Union. The Russians would later find Kim Il-sung to be a useful puppet for their purposes in northern Korea after World War II. It was not possible for Kim Jong-il to have been born anywhere in Korea since the Japanese would have most likely found out about it (they had spies and the secret police, the Kempeitai everywhere). If the Japanese were successful in wiping out Communist guerrilla opposition in Manchuria, then it would have been impossible for active secret military camps to have been set up in Korea itself. There is no question that Kim Jong-il was not born in Korea.