SEOUL: Kim Jong-Il’s teenage grandson has labelled his uncle, North Korea’s new leader Kim Jong-Un, a “dictator” in an interview that offers a rare glimpse into the world’s most secretive ruling dynasty.

During the interview, conducted at the school in Bosnia where he studies, Kim Han-Sol, 17, spoke of his desire to “make things better” for the Korean people.

Kim also talked of his close friendships with South Korean and US students and his hopes for the Korean peninsula’s reunification.

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 in the interview, which aired on Finnish television and was posted on YouTube.

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 Jung-Un. “It was between him and my grandfather.”

The interview was conducted in English by Elisabeth Rehn, a former United Nations under secretary general and special rapporteur for Human Rights in Bosnia-Hercegovina, and first broadcast on Monday.

Kim enrolled in the United World College in Mostar last year, arousing intense media interest, which he did his best to avoid.

Speaking of his overseas studies, both in Macau and Bosnia, Kim recalled how it was “kind of awkward” when he first met students from South Korea as well as the United States.

“It’s really sad I can’t go to the other side [South Korea],” he added. “But we can, if we put in a little effort, step-by-step, come to a conclusion and unite.”