When journalists found out last October that Kim Jong Il’s grandson was attending school in Bosnia and Herzegovina, it sparked a frenzy of activity to learn more about Kim Han Sol.

The news surfaced when the Bosnian embassy confirmed that the teenage Kim, son of Kim Jong Nam, Kim Jong Il’s eldest son, had been given a study visa.

His school rebuffed efforts to reach him and his Internet footprint didn’t reveal much beyond that he looked more like a South Korean kid than a North Korean and appeared on social media to be defensive about his family background. The trail soon went cold, and the young Kim got on with his studies out of the media spotlight.

He’s back in it with a bang. A remarkably candid TV interview, uploaded to YouTube this week and conducted by former United Nations Under-Secretary General Elisabeth Rehn, tells us plenty about Kim Han Sol.

He’s clearly an articulate, balanced and confident young man, completely at ease in English. He talks about having close South Korean friends and his dream of going back to North Korea to “make things better, make it easier for the people there.”