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where did kim jong un go to school

Kim Jong Un is widely reported to have attended school in Switzerland as a teenager and then studied at elite institutions in North Korea, though details are partly speculative and not officially confirmed.

Key points in his schooling

  • He is reported to have studied under a false identity at the International School of Berne (or a related international/private school) in the canton of Bern, Switzerland, during the 1990s.
  • Accounts from former classmates and staff describe him as a quiet, basketball‑obsessed student who lived relatively normally for someone from such a secretive regime.
  • After returning to North Korea, he is said to have studied at Kim Il Sung Military University / Kim Il-Sung National War College in Pyongyang, an elite institution that trains future political and military leaders.

How certain is this information?

Most of what is known comes from intelligence reports, biographies, and media investigations, not from official, detailed North Korean disclosures, so some elements (like exact years, programs, and whether he completed specific diplomas) remain uncertain. However, the Switzerland boarding-school period and later military or party schooling in Pyongyang are consistently repeated across major reference works and news outlets, making that basic outline the closest thing to a consensus view.

Information gathered from public forums or data available on the internet and portrayed here.