A family rift? A secret death? You might have heard of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un,
but who changed his diapers? Keep watching to learn about the woman
whose identity is a tightly guarded state secret.
Kim Jong Un, the supreme leader of the Democratic Republic of North Korea,
is one of the most famous public figures across the world. However,
despite his infamy, the backstory of his lineage remains under the radar.
While his father was Kim Jong Il, the previous leader of North Korea,
information about his mother, Ko Yong Hui, is a secret, according to the New
York Times. The mystery around her has continued, even after her death in 2004.
According to NK News, a media website run by North Korean defectors, part of the reason
Ko remains out of the spotlight is because her in-laws did not approve of her. For starters,
she had been working as an actress and dancer when she first met Kim Jong Il in the 1970s.
The rift between Ko and her in-laws was apparently bitter enough that Kim Jong Un sought revenge on
behalf of his mother following his ascension to the chairmanship. According to The New York Times,
Kim blamed his uncle for aggravating the bad blood, and had him executed in 2013.
That said, Ko had a bigger so-called shortcoming in the eyes of the North Korean elite:
a half Japanese bloodline. Though North Korea, South Korea, and Japan
are neighbors geographically, they share a bitter history with one another.
The Korean peninsula was colonized by Japan in 1910 after years of aggression.
But the term colonization does not fully describe
the all-out culture war that Japan waged against the Korean people.
For example, the Korean language was forbidden in schools and public places,
and historical documents were routinely burned. Things only got worse when World
War II started. Japanese families were given the farms and property of Koreans.
Meanwhile, Korean men were trafficked to different islands to become laborers, while
women were trafficked as "comfort women", which is a nice way of saying “forced unpaid sex workers.”
"Their existence is bitterly contested by the Japanese."
In fact, it is possible that Ko was the product of a comfort woman's time with a Japanese man —
though this is pure speculation. Other sources have claimed that Ko actually was the daughter
of a Japanese woman and a Korean laborer who had been sent to Osaka to work in a sewing factory.
However, what is known is that she was born in Japan and of half-Japanese and
half-Korean heritage. This alone made her undesirable due to her connection
to a country widely considered at the time to be Korea's chief historical oppressor.
While it seems as if the solution to Ko's background was to keep her out
of the spotlight, there were some attempts to recuperate her image starting in 2002.
That said, most of this publicity push was reserved for the small circles of
North Korea's elite instead of the population at large.
Part of this was because Ko had achieved enough fame in her youth as a dancer that her name,
and thus her link to Japan, was recognizable. According to NK News, this issue was skirted by
referring to Ko as the, quote, "respected mother" of Kim Jong Un and his siblings or as the, quote,
"comrade" of Kim Jong Il. They were all titles that conveniently didn't use her name.
The focus on loyalty to North Korea and her husband served a second purpose:
demonstrating a successful tale of "Anti-Japanese" struggle.
Though Ko may have been referred to as a "mother," little is actually known about
her relationship with her son, Kim Jong Un. The best descriptions available come from Ko's
sister and brother-in-law, who defected to the United States after Ko's death.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Ko's sister painted a picture of both normalcy
and paradox. In some ways, Kim Jong Un seemed like a normal boy, especially during his time
at a boarding school in Switzerland. Kim's aunt described how Ko would take Kim Jong
Un to Disneyland Tokyo and how she indulged his passions, such as his obsession with basketball.
However, Ko's sister also noted how Ko found it difficult to punish her son,
especially when he began to realize his position of power in the North Korean regime. She recalled,
"He wasn't a troublemaker, but he was short-tempered and had a lack of tolerance. When
his mother tried to tell him off for playing with these things too much and not studying enough,
he wouldn't talk back, but he would protest in other ways, like going on a hunger strike."
"From that moment, Ko said, Kim's behavior changed."
Despite the secrecy surrounding Ko's background, motherhood, and life in
general, some reports have claimed that she pulled a lot of strings behind the scenes.
North Korean experts have noted that Ko acted as the First Lady of North Korea
from the 1990s and onwards, despite her relatively mysterious persona.
However, there was evidence that Ko had more clout than previously realized.
"They predicted his downfall. But Kim Jong-Un has defied the odds,
and survived as leader of North Korea."
She managed to position her own son as the heir to the North Korean regime,
rather than Kim Jong Il's oldest son from his first wife. This son, Kim Jong Nam, was originally
considered the successor before being sidelined in 2001. He was exiled from the country in 2003
and four years later was assassinated in Malaysia, according to The Guardian.
"Why would the young dictator of North Korea want to kill his own brother?"
Though it seemed that the North Korean government had been attempting a mild
publicity push for Ko in the early 2000s, it was a short-lived endeavor, as Ko died in 2004.
The details around her death are as murky as those surrounding her life.
According to The Mirror, most sources believe that she died in Paris of an illness,
most often reported as breast cancer.
However, other reports have claimed that she was simply treated for her mystery illness in
Paris and managed to return to Pyongyang in the late spring or summer of 2004.
Those reports claim that she fell into a coma and died that August.
It is believed that Ko's death was not widely publicized in North Korea,
and Kim Jong Il publicly moved on with a new partner, Kim Young-sook, after her passing.
After Kim Jong Il died in 2011, Ko's name became a state secret,
ensuring that future generations will likely know as little about her as known today.
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