The man who called Donald Trump "President Evil" last week at the U.N. General Assembly is actually a genteel intellectual who studies the memoirs of former U.S. presidents and has taste for fine whiskey, according to ten people who know him.

North Korea's Foreign Minister Ri Yong Ho made headlines with his Sept. 23 speech to the 193-member General Assembly, saying North Korea's next move might be to detonate a hydrogen bomb above the Pacific Ocean, in response to U.S. President Trump's threat to "totally destroy" his country of 26 million people.

While bellicose rhetoric often spouts from militaristic North Korea, it's less frequent to hear it from someone described by friends and colleagues as a polite and softly-spoken career diplomat with a self-deprecating sense of humor and sharp debating skills.