A Mystery About a Mistress in North Korea
The Seoul Times 
South Korea
_________
Seol (South Korea):
South Korean government officials are struggling to confirm persistent reports from North Korea of the recent death of its leader 
Kim Jong Il's favorite mistress, a former dancer who was elevated in the Communist state's pantheon to the status of "respected mother." The woman, Koh Young Hee, a Japanese-born Korean dancer, was treated in Paris last spring for advanced cancer.
Over the summer, Ms. Koh, the 51-year-old mother of two of Mr. Kim's sons, was flown back to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, where she fell into a coma. The Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun reported recently that North Korean diplomats in Paris bought an "extremely expensive" coffin and shipped it to Pyongyang by charter flight.
Emblematic of a people who revere the turtle as a national symbol, North Korea two weeks ago unexpectedly closed its northern border to foreign tourists, a major source of foreign exchange.
Then on Sunday, Mr. Kim's National Defense Commission severely restricted the number of Pyongyang telephones that could be used to call foreign residents and embassies. The Russian news agency Tass said these restrictions were intended to prevent "possible leaks of information."
These measures are part of a tightening of controls in North Korea, including the banning of cellphones in May, the construction this summer of a wooden wall in the most traveled sections of the China border to discourage unauthorized travel there, and the reopening of militia checkpoints on roads leading into Pyongyang.
The photo, taken in 1981, shows Kim Jong-Il with his oldest son Kim Jong-Nam (front row). Three others (second row) Kim's sister in law Sung Hye-Rang and her daughter Lee Nam-Ock and son Lee Han-Young. Sung and her children defected to South Korea later. Sun Hye-Lim, Kim's wife, was in Moscow for medical treatment when this photo was taken.
"The intelligence sectors on North Korea in South Korea, the United States and Japan have shared a common assessment that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's wife has died of illness," Cho Gab Je, a South Korean journalist who specializes in the North, said on his Web site on Tuesday, referring to Mr. Kim's main partner of the last quarter-century. "Some say this death would have serious psychological effects on Kim. Kim, who has heart problems, had been refraining from drinking on Koh's advice."
Kim Duk Hong, a high-ranking North Korean defector who maintains a North Korean information network in China's border area, said in an interview on Thursday: "I am sure Koh Young Hee is now deceased. But since calls made and received by North Korea residents are cut off, I can only guess that North Korea is trying to block the news from spreading."
A delicate beauty, Ms. Koh caught the eye of Kim Jong Il when her dance troupe performed at one of his private parties. Enchanted, Mr. Kim, who already had a mistress and a wife at the time, installed her at one of his villas.
"I once was walking on the beach and I saw him sitting on a chair, and Koh Young Hee was cutting his hair," said the chef, whose latest book, "Kim Jong Il's Private Life," was published last month in Japanese under a pseudonym, Kenji Fujimoto. "It was such a sweet scene that I asked my wife to cut my hair."
"She was the only one who could tell him 'no,' " continued the chef, who worked for 13 years for the North's ruling family.
In addition to removing a brake on the mercurial leader's impulses, the death of North Korea's "great woman," as North Korean propaganda called her, complicates the succession issue in the Communist world's first dynasty.
Two years ago, North Korea's military propaganda machine started to promote Kim Jong Il's favorite mistress, prompting speculation that one of their two sons, Kim Jong Chul, 23, or Kim Jong Woon, 21, was being groomed as the North Korean leader's heir-apparent. In preparation for Mr. Kim's rise to power in 1994, he directed the state propaganda machine to publish articles praising his own mother, thus giving him legitimacy as his father's true political heir.
Kim Jong Il's other son is Kim Jong Nam, 34, who fell into disfavor in Pyongyang in 2001 when he was detained at Narita Airport trying to enter Japan on a fraudulent Dominican Republic passport. Accompanied by a 4-year-old boy and two women, he told the police he was planning to visit Disneyworld.
(The above article is from The New York Times).
Oct 18, 2005
The Seoul Times
South Korea
_________
Seol (South Korea):
South Korean government officials are struggling to confirm persistent reports from North Korea of the recent death of its leader
Kim Jong Il's favorite mistress, a former dancer who was elevated in the Communist state's pantheon to the status of "respected mother." The woman, Koh Young Hee, a Japanese-born Korean dancer, was treated in Paris last spring for advanced cancer.Over the summer, Ms. Koh, the 51-year-old mother of two of Mr. Kim's sons, was flown back to the North Korean capital, Pyongyang, where she fell into a coma. The Japanese newspaper Sankei Shimbun reported recently that North Korean diplomats in Paris bought an "extremely expensive" coffin and shipped it to Pyongyang by charter flight.
Emblematic of a people who revere the turtle as a national symbol, North Korea two weeks ago unexpectedly closed its northern border to foreign tourists, a major source of foreign exchange.
Then on Sunday, Mr. Kim's National Defense Commission severely restricted the number of Pyongyang telephones that could be used to call foreign residents and embassies. The Russian news agency Tass said these restrictions were intended to prevent "possible leaks of information."
These measures are part of a tightening of controls in North Korea, including the banning of cellphones in May, the construction this summer of a wooden wall in the most traveled sections of the China border to discourage unauthorized travel there, and the reopening of militia checkpoints on roads leading into Pyongyang.
The photo, taken in 1981, shows Kim Jong-Il with his oldest son Kim Jong-Nam (front row). Three others (second row) Kim's sister in law Sung Hye-Rang and her daughter Lee Nam-Ock and son Lee Han-Young. Sung and her children defected to South Korea later. Sun Hye-Lim, Kim's wife, was in Moscow for medical treatment when this photo was taken.
"The intelligence sectors on North Korea in South Korea, the United States and Japan have shared a common assessment that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il's wife has died of illness," Cho Gab Je, a South Korean journalist who specializes in the North, said on his Web site on Tuesday, referring to Mr. Kim's main partner of the last quarter-century. "Some say this death would have serious psychological effects on Kim. Kim, who has heart problems, had been refraining from drinking on Koh's advice."
Kim Duk Hong, a high-ranking North Korean defector who maintains a North Korean information network in China's border area, said in an interview on Thursday: "I am sure Koh Young Hee is now deceased. But since calls made and received by North Korea residents are cut off, I can only guess that North Korea is trying to block the news from spreading."
A delicate beauty, Ms. Koh caught the eye of Kim Jong Il when her dance troupe performed at one of his private parties. Enchanted, Mr. Kim, who already had a mistress and a wife at the time, installed her at one of his villas.
"I once was walking on the beach and I saw him sitting on a chair, and Koh Young Hee was cutting his hair," said the chef, whose latest book, "Kim Jong Il's Private Life," was published last month in Japanese under a pseudonym, Kenji Fujimoto. "It was such a sweet scene that I asked my wife to cut my hair."
"She was the only one who could tell him 'no,' " continued the chef, who worked for 13 years for the North's ruling family.
In addition to removing a brake on the mercurial leader's impulses, the death of North Korea's "great woman," as North Korean propaganda called her, complicates the succession issue in the Communist world's first dynasty.
Two years ago, North Korea's military propaganda machine started to promote Kim Jong Il's favorite mistress, prompting speculation that one of their two sons, Kim Jong Chul, 23, or Kim Jong Woon, 21, was being groomed as the North Korean leader's heir-apparent. In preparation for Mr. Kim's rise to power in 1994, he directed the state propaganda machine to publish articles praising his own mother, thus giving him legitimacy as his father's true political heir.
Kim Jong Il's other son is Kim Jong Nam, 34, who fell into disfavor in Pyongyang in 2001 when he was detained at Narita Airport trying to enter Japan on a fraudulent Dominican Republic passport. Accompanied by a 4-year-old boy and two women, he told the police he was planning to visit Disneyworld.
(The above article is from The New York Times).
Oct 18, 2005
