Two weeks ago, a group called Cheollima Civil Defense uploaded a forty-second video to YouTube with a caption that read, in Korean, “To the people of North Korea.” In the video, a baby-faced Asian man, speaking accented but fluent English, identifies himself as Kim Han-sol, a North Korean and a member of “the Kim family.” He holds a North Korean passport up to the camera—most of the document’s identifying details were blocked out before the video was released—as if to prove his identity. Finally, the young man says, in a calm voice, “My father has been killed a few days ago. I’m currently with my mother and my sister. And we’re very grateful to”—here, again, the video was edited, the audio removed and the man’s lips blocked out, presumably to obscure details of his location and associates—“and we hope this gets better soon.”

Soon after the video surfaced, the South Korean National Intelligence Service publicly confirmed that the man was, in fact, Kim Han-sol, a nephew of Kim Jong-un, North Korea’s leader, and believed to be the eldest son of Kim Jong-nam, the leader’s half brother, who was murdered last month at an airport in Kuala Lumpur. The circumstances of Kim Jong-nam’s death—two women rubbed his face with VX nerve agent—attracted international attention, while both the Malaysian authorities and the South Korean government accused Kim Jong-un of ordering the hit. North Korea responded not only by denying any role in the death but also by denying that the incident had anything to do with the Kim family. According to North Korea, the victim was a North Korean citizen named Kim Chol (a pseudonym Kim Jong-nam had used to travel incognito), and he had died of a heart attack. That a member of the Kim family would come forward to rebut the official narrative was unprecedented, and that his video statement was addressed to the nation as a whole, despite the fact that the Internet is forbidden to most of its citizens, was extraordinary.

Kim Han-sol, who is in his early twenties, was educated in Macau, Bosnia, and France, and has spent much of his life outside North Korea. On their own, these facts can’t be used to form any conclusions about his politics—Kim Jong-un was educated in Switzerland and is as committed an authoritarian as exists on Earth. The media, however, has focussed on an interview that Kim Han-sol gave to a Finnish TV station in 2012, in which he comes across as eloquent, reasonable, and open-minded. Much has been made of Kim Han-sol’s reference to Kim Jong-un as a “dictator” in this appearance—but that may well have been a slip of the tongue from a teen-ager giving his first sit-down interview in front of a camera. More notable, in my opinion, is that he spends most of the interview discussing the value of the international community at his schools in Macau and Bosnia, and of the things he learned from his Libyan roommate, who told him about the revolution in his country. “Because of the multiculturalism that the school has and the diversity in the classrooms, it is easier for all of us to expand on our topics in the class and share our opinions on various topics,” Kim Han-sol says. “And through that I think we can come to a better understanding with no boundaries, and I think that’s a very crucial thing for building a more peaceful community.” He speaks of everyone having “very similar core human values”; of his future hopes, he says, “I would like to engage in more humanitarian projects and also work to contribute to building world peace, and especially back home. . . . I’ve always dreamed that one day I will go back and make things better and make it easier for the people there.”

In 2011, I spent six months undercover in Pyongyang, teaching English and gathering reporting for my book about the country. My students, who were nineteen or twenty years old, were the sons of North Korea’s élite, and Kim Han-sol reminds me of them. South Korean media outlets have followed his postings on YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter for years. Sometimes his comments have been supportive of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, while at other times he has declared sympathy for democracy. My students were often similarly conflicted.

What distinguishes Kim Han-sol is his lineage. His father was the first son of the previous Great Leader, Kim Jong-il, which means that Han-sol can claim a direct line of descent from North Korea’s founding leader, Kim Il-sung. In North Korea, the Great Leader concept blends several ideas that run through Korean history: an almighty God, the Confucian worship of a parent, and a king with the Mandate of Heaven. The Great Leader myth was also built around what North Koreans call the Baekdu hyultong, or Baekdu bloodline, named after Mt. Baekdu, the tallest mountain in Korea and a symbol of Korean nationalism, which has supposedly blessed the Kim family with its holy energy. The Kims keep their family tree deliberately obscure—children and wives are often concealed from public view—and Kim Han-sol’s mother has sometimes been referred to in the press outside North Korea as a mistress instead of a wife of Kim Jong-nam, who had children with at least two women. Still, an argument can be made that Kim Han-sol is more entitled to the position of Great Leader than Kim Jong-un, who is Kim Jong-il’s third son, and whose mother was born in Japan. According to the North Korean caste system, called songbun, people born in Japan or South Korea, the nation’s archenemies, are categorized in a lower class—Kim Jong-un’s heritage on his mother’s side would be considered “impure.” By apparently having Kim Jong-nam—a fellow-beneficiary of the bloodline—killed, Kim Jong-un has further damaged the Baekdu hyultong myth.

The significance of the group called Cheollima Civil Defense is still unclear. Is it a North Korean defector group, a South Korean outfit, or something else? Kang Cheol-hwuan, a former North Korean political prisoner and the founder of the human-rights group North Korean Strategy Center, told me that Cheollima Civil Defense could be a front group for individuals who coördinate contact between foreign governments and high-ranking North Korean officials. “They must be highly specialized brokers or agents,” he said. “It doesn’t seem feasible that they are a civilian group.”

Cheollima refers to a mythical flying horse that is commonly used as a propaganda symbol in North Korea. Originally used as the name for Kim Il-sung’s postwar economic push to increase the country’s productivity (he wanted workers to produce goods at cheollima speed), the term has since been used for a Pyongyang subway line, a cigarette brand, and the country’s national soccer team. Images of cheollima are found on postage stamps and coins. A bronze statue of cheollima stands in the middle of Pyongyang.

The group’s Web site consists of just a single page, and its Korean is oddly stilted, as if the statements there had been drafted first in a different language, then translated. The page features a mission statement addressed “To the People of North Korea,” which says, “If you want to escape or share information, we will protect you. This would be possible no matter what country you are in. We will safely escort you to wherever you want. We, who have already helped several North Koreans, do not expect any payment.” Below this, the group has posted the testimony of “a high-ranking North Korean official” who claims to have escaped with the group’s assistance, and describes a James Bond-esque operation involving “fancy cars and airplanes.” The last thing on the page is the group’s statement claiming responsibility for Kim Han-sol’s escape to an undisclosed location, for which the group thanks the governments of the Netherlands, the United States, China, and an “unnamed” country. The only individual they mention by name is Lody Embrechts, the current Dutch Ambassador to both Koreas. (Embrechts refused a request for comment for this article.) An e-mail address is listed, and the group asks that any donations be made in bitcoin.