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North Korean Policy Elites - Defense Technical Information Center

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also against the second-tier family of his dearest sister and Kim Il Sung’s only daughter, Kim<br />

Kyong-Hui. 11 Kim Kyong-hui was born in 1946; she is a graduate of the Kim Il Sung University<br />

and is rumored to be very close to the heart and mind of the Dear Leader. As one Pyongyang<br />

insider notes, “For Kim Jong Il, only his sister Kim Kyong-Hui counts. He always protected her<br />

from their step-mother.” Kim Kyong-Hui’s family can ground her hereditary succession claim on<br />

the simple fact that she and her husband, Chang Sung-thaek, have delivered the only legitimate<br />

grandson to the Great Leader Kim Il Sung, which makes him the only legitimate third-generation<br />

male heir to Kim Il Sung’s throne. His name is Chang Kim-song and he is known to have studied<br />

in Sweden in the late 1990s. They also have a smart and beautiful daughter, Kim Gum Sung,<br />

born in 1978, whom Kim Jong Il asked to work at the party central committee, where her mother<br />

heads the WPK CC Economic <strong>Policy</strong> Inspection Department. Without doubt, Kim Jong Il adores<br />

and loves his sister very much, and she is said to be his close confident.<br />

The Dear Leader also likes his brother-in-law Chang Sung-thaek a lot and allegedly<br />

delegated the oversight of the state security apparatus to him. Since the early 1980s, Chang<br />

Sung-thaek has worked at the WPK CC, first spearheading the Youth and Three Revolutions<br />

Team Department and later as the first deputy director of the Organization and Guidance<br />

Department, a position held by Kim Jong Il before his ascendance to power in the 1970s. That<br />

fact gave rise to speculation that one day “Comrade Director Chang” or his son may inherit Kim<br />

Jong Il’s mantle. Chang Sung-thaek is believed to have substantial influence over Kim Jong Il<br />

directly and through his wife Kim Kyong-Hui. He is the only close relative of Kim Jong Il, who<br />

visited the Republic of Korea in November 2002. He left a very good impression in Seoul as a<br />

modernizer and supporter of economic reforms and is regarded as a potential conduit for South<br />

<strong>Korean</strong> influence inside Pyongyang’s Versailles.<br />

Kim Jong Il seems to use the Chang family and three Chang brothers as his eyes and ears<br />

inside the state security apparatus. He placed Chang’s older brother, Vice-Marshal Chang Sung-<br />

U (born in 1935), who had previously served at the Ministry of People’s Security and the<br />

General Guards Bureau, in charge of the Political Bureau of the MPAF’s Guard Command and<br />

the Third Army Corps deployed in Pyongyang and critical for the regime security. He also<br />

appointed Chang Song-kil, Chang Sung-thaek’s younger brother, as the deputy commander of<br />

the 4th Corps. This notwithstanding, one has to remember that in the mid-1970s, Kim Jong Il and<br />

Chang Sung-thaek had a rather tense relationship because of Kim Il Sung’s purge of Chang<br />

Sung-thaek’s uncle, Chang Chon Hwan, the then-Deputy Minister of the People’s Armed Forces.<br />

11 Kim Jong Il is said to have had a younger brother Kim Tong-il (who was named Shura in Russian), who was born<br />

in Khabarovsk in the former Soviet Union in 1944 and drowned in Pyongyang at the age of four in 1947. Kim<br />

Jong Il’s second brother was said to have been still-born in September 1949.<br />

IV-17

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