A new book published in Japan has shed fresh light on the life of Ko Yong-hui, the mother of Kim Jong-un, whose background the North Korean leader would prefer remains shrouded in secrecy.
Published last month, Ko Yong-hui: The Zainichi Korean Who Became Kim Jong-un’s Mother, was written by journalist and author Yoji Gomi and draws on interviews with relatives still based in Japan, detailing how Kim Jong-un’s maternal grandfather made a precarious living as a smuggler and had to flee to North Korea when he was close to being arrested for his illegal enterprise.
For a regime founded on hatred for Japan for its colonial occupation of Korea and the supremacy of the Kim dynasty, news that Kim’s grandfather was a common smuggler could be hugely damaging. It also undermines the regime’s perception of zainichi, or second-generation Koreans living in Japan, who move to North Korea as spies.
“North Korea has long propagated the narrative that the Kim family single-handedly achieved independence for the nation,” Gomi told This Week in Asia. “However, revealing that the mother of the [North] Korean leader was a zainichi Korean – a group that is subject to discrimination in the North to this day – would undermine the regime’s prestige and legitimacy.”
The Kim clan has always promoted the purity of the “Mount Paektu bloodline”, named for the iconic mountain that stands on North Korea’s border with China and was, according to legend, the site of the guerrilla camp from where Kim Il-sung, founder of the nation and the present ruler’s grandfather, led a band of rebels fighting the Japanese forces occupying the peninsula.
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