North Korean ruler Kim Jong-Un has reportedly given copies of Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf” to his top officials on the occasion of his birthday celebration last January, urging them to study it as a leadership skills manual, according to a report in New Focus International, an online news portal run by North Korean defectors.

“Kim Jong-un gave a lecture to high-ranking officials, stressing that we must pursue the policy of Byungjin (Korean for ‘in tandem’) in terms of nuclear and economic development. Mentioning that Hitler managed to rebuild Germany in a short time following its defeat in WWI, Kim Jong-un issued an order for the Third Reich to be studied in depth and asked that practical applications be drawn from it,” a source, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the news site in a telephone interview.

The source added that Kim Jong-un highlighted sports as the secret behind Germany’s unity and ideological successes and stressed the superiority of Hitler’s thinking in childhood-related policies, and issued an order for propaganda departments to encourage a “Three Child” policy.

The North’s police agency later Wednesday called the report a “thrice-cursed crime” aimed at belittling its leader and threatened to kill the “human scum” behind the article.

“We are… determined to take substantial measures to physically remove despicable human scum who are committing treasons,” it said in a statement carried by the state-run Korean Central News Agency.

“Sordid human scum will never be able to look up to the sky nor be able to find an inch of land to be buried after their death,” it said.

It also vowed to launch “merciless punishment of justice” against Seoul and Washington, accusing the two nations of encouraging the defectors to defame its ruler.

The report, sourced to an unnamed North Korean official working in China, was picked up by all major South Korean newspapers on Wednesday.

“Mentioning that Hitler managed to rebuild Germany in a short time following its defeat in World War I, Kim Jong-Un issued an order for the Third Reich to be studied in depth and asked that practical applications be drawn from it,” the source was quoted as saying, according to the AFP news agency.

The Kim family dynasty has ruled North Korea with an iron fist for more than six decades.

Kim Jong-Un took over the isolated communist state after the death of his father Kim Jong-Il, in December 2011.