A video obtained by CNN shows North Korean soldiers breaking bricks over their head during training—a practice that defector Lee Young-guk said was meant to "develop loyalty" to the late dictator Kim Jong Il.
"Handgun doesn't win a war. Taekwondo says ‘nothing but the spirit.’ It's being used to develop loyalty," Lee said. "They're trying to make them think that by training like this, they can beat the U.S. military."
Lee, a former bodyguard to Kim Jong Il, told CNN’s Paula Hancocks that his training involved brainwashing to make him believe that the North Korean dictator was God and that Lee had been born solely to protect Kim.
"When he's happy, he will give gold bars to people. When he's not, it doesn't matter how loyal you are--he could kill you in an instant," Lee said. "His advisers were too scared to tell him the truth about the country; sometimes they would even run away when they saw him coming and hide in the grass."
Lee said that North Korea’s new dictator, Kim Jong Un, may be even more brutal than his father.