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A family saga filled with intrigue and murder: Why Kim Jong-un never talks about his "Japanese" mother

2026-06-29 21:30:29Kosova&Bota SHKRUAR NGA REDAKSIA VOX
A family saga filled with intrigue and murder: Why Kim Jong-un never talks about
Why Kim Jong-un never talks about his "Japanese" mother

By Guido Santevecchi, Corriere della Sera

The specter of motherhood haunts Kim Jong-un. The North Korean Marshal-President has presented himself to his people as an exemplary father, showcasing his beautiful wife and taking his daughter with him to military ranges where increasingly powerful weapons are tested. However, in his country, Kim has raised a thick veil of secrecy around the woman who gave birth to him.

The problem is that she was born in Japan in 1952, among those two million Koreans who emigrated, more or less voluntarily, to the Japanese Empire between 1910 and 1945, when the Korean Peninsula was a colony of Tokyo, known as Joseon.

Kim's mother was named Ko Yong Hui. Her father, Ko Kyong Thaek, had left the Korean island of Jeju for Osaka, Japan, in the 1930s in search of a better life, becoming a factory manager.

His life reads like a historical novel. When American bombing began to burn down Japanese cities during World War II, he returned to Jeju. After Japan's defeat, he went into hiding for fear of being accused of collaborating with the invaders. Then, the civil war between North and South Korea forced him to secretly flee again to Osaka. It was in this Japanese city, in 1952, that the girl Yong Hui was born, destined to link her fate with the Kim family.

Yong Hui lived in Osaka until he was ten. In 1962, Pyongyang persuaded about 90,000 Koreans who had remained in Japan to return to what the regime's propaganda called a "workers' paradise on earth."

The girl had a talent for dancing and, as a teenager, was accepted into the Mansudae artistic troupe, created in 1969 by order of the young Kim Jong-il, son of Kim Il Sung, founder of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (the official name of North Korea).

It was love at first sight between the ballerina and the heir to the dynasty.

Kim Jong-il did not marry her because he already had an official wife, but Yong Hui bore him three children, who were officially recognized: Kim Jong-chol, Kim Jong-un, and Kim Yo-jong.

The elderly Kim Il Sung, a communist and strict moralist, never agreed to see his illegitimate grandchildren. Instead, they were the favorite children of Kim Jong-il, who in 1994 became the "Dear Leader" of North Korea after inheriting supreme power from his father, who had died of a heart attack.

Kim Jong-il also had two daughters by his official wife and a son, Kim Jong-nam, by another partner.

The selection of Kim Jong-un as heir to the "red throne" seems to have occurred more out of a lack of alternatives.

Jong-chol was more passionate about music than power (it is even said that he was also into drugs); Yo-jong is a woman, although today she is considered Kim III's most trusted advisor; while half-brother Jong-nam had doubts about the absolute regime and was killed in 2017 at Kuala Lumpur airport.

A family saga filled with intrigue, betrayal and blood.

It remains to be explained why Kimi, the man who places so much importance on family, has deleted any reference to his mother, whom, according to many accounts, he loved immensely.

This is particularly supported by the Japanese writer Gomi Yoji, author of the book "Ko Yong Hui, the Korean-Japanese woman who became Kim Jong-un's mother."

According to Gomi, about fifty biological relatives of Kim Jong-un still live in Japan.

The internal prestige of the dynasty that has ruled North Korea for eight decades is linked to the so-called "bloodline of Mount Paektu", the mountain on the border with China where, according to legend, the mythical king Dangun was born in the 24th century BC and where, during World War II, Kim Il Sung is said to have set up his headquarters in the fight against the Japanese colonialists.

According to the regime's official mythology, Kim Jong-il was also born on Mount Paektu, while Kim Jong-un often climbs its peak on a white horse whenever he wants to remember the dynasty's heroic origins.

Letting the people know that he is the son of a "half-Japanese" woman would be a serious blow to the Marshal-President.

Relations between Pyongyang and Tokyo have always been tense.

"Such a public revelation would have the impact of an atomic bomb on the regime's hereditary power system," says Ryu Hyun-woo, a former Pyongyang diplomat who has defected to South Korea.

Among the propaganda leaflets that South Korean opponents have dropped by balloons over North Korean territory, some have targeted Kim Jong-un, reminding him that he is "not a descendant of Mount Paektu, but of Mount Fuji," the sacred mountain of Japan.

That's why he has erased from public memory the figure of his mother, who died of cancer in 2004, in a clinic in Paris.


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