North Korean Policy Elites - Defense Technical Information Center

controlling some of North Korea’s overseas cash flows and financial operations going through
the Chinese banking system, including in Hong Kong and Macao. He is said to have developed
some personal loyalties within the North Korean national security establishment. One wonders
whether some forces within the North Korean State Security Agency might be willing to
consider Kim Jong Nam as a potential alternative to the Dear Leader. Kim Jong Nam may appeal
to them as one of the young and ambitious Kim family members who was rejected by Kim Jong
Il and is very unhappy about his fate and his life because he can never win back his father on his
own, and, at the same time, as a relatively safe choice because of the low likelihood that Kim
Jong Il will murder his own eldest son as Ivan the Terrible or Josef Stalin did, should he find out
about Kim Jong Nam’s potential betrayal.
Kim Jong Il’s two younger sons, Kim Jong Chul and Kim Jong Un, born respectively in
1981 and 1983, are the bastard children of another concubine, a former dancer of Japanese-
Korean decent. Ko Young-Hui, 10 who commands most of Kim Jong Il’s personal time and shares
plenty of pillow talk with her common-law husband. She is said to be a very good cook, has a
creative personality, and is always trying to find ways of stimulating her husband and of
interesting him in new things. She is rumored to be very manipulative, has a lot of influence over
Kim Jong Il, and a lot of power. One Pyongyang insider believes that “Kim Jong Il does what
she wants him to do. He does not know how to say no to a woman he is in love with.” In
particular, she is credited with the ascension of the Korean-Japanese in the 1980s in North
Korean society and the diplomatic opening towards Japan since the 1990s.
Ko Young-Hui’s and Kim Jong Il’s two boys and their younger sister lived and grew up
under Kim Jong Il’s personal care, seeing him almost daily at his second private residence on
Mount Taesong San. They spent some time in private boarding schools in Switzerland, but were
mostly educated domestically where they were exposed to the North Korean educational system.
The elder son, Kim Jong Chul, currently attends the Kim Il Sung University. All three children
are said to be very close to their father, the Dear Leader, emotionally and ideationally, although
break from his studies at a military university outside Pyongyang. The KGB could not find him, and Kim Jong Il
suspected that the ROK intelligence service had kidnapped the youth. Li Il Nam resurfaced in South Korea in
1991, but was murdered under suspicious circumstances in Seoul in 1992, which some people believe may have
been a “birthday gift” to Kim Jong Il from the DPRK’s security services.
10 Mdme. Ko Young-Hui was born in Osaka to the family of a professional wrestler in 1952 and returned to Korea
from Japan with her Korean-Japanese parents in 1960 when she was eight years old. She received most of her
education in Korea. She met Kim Jong I1 when she turned 20 in 1972 at one of her traditional dance performances,
which he observed as the head of the cultural department at the WPK Central Committee. She is quite small – 154
cm in height. Her parents were never party members. As half-Japanese, they belonged to the social outcasts. For a
long time, Kim Jong Il could not make public his relationship with Ko Young-Hui because of her background -
half-Japanese, no party membership, social pariah and politically suspect. The first time that she was exposed to
international observation was in the mid-1990s when she is rumored to have visited Switzerland for breast cancer
surgery.
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