Kim Jong-un endorses Mein Kampf as guidebook for economic growth
North Korean leader gifts Hitler's magnum opus to host of high-ranking officials during own birthday, Korean site reports
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un handed copies of Adolf Hitler's Mein Kampf to a host of the country's top officials last January. The website New Focus International reported the controversial volume was printed especially in the format of a “hundred-copy book,” meaning a limited edition of banned books that have been published in secret for the consumption of members of the country's elite.
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Mein Kampf, published in two volumes in 1925 and 1926 offers an amalgam of its author's autobiography with an exposition of his political ideology. Owing due to its blatantly racist content, and the historical consequences of the ideologies it espoused it is a hugely controversial volume, banned in many countries.
Kim Jong-un with Korean military's top brass (Photo: AP)
The gifting took place at the leader's birthday party on January 8.
According to New Focus International, what attracted Jong-un to the book was the laying out of the tenets that enabled Germany to achieve considerable economic growth in the early years of Hitler's reign.
“Kim Jong-un gave a lecture to high-ranking officials, stressing that we must pursue the policy of Byungjin (Korean for ‘in tandem’) in terms of nuclear and economic development. Mentioning that Hitler managed to rebuild Germany in a short time following its defeat in WWI, Kim Jong-un issued an order for the Third Reich to be studied in depth and asked that practical applications be drawn from it,” the site quoted an inside source as saying.
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