Posted on 08/27/2004 7:43:47 AM PDT by TigerLikesRooster
A Mystery About a Mistress in North Korea
By JAMES BROOKE
Published: August 27, 2004
EOUL, South Korea, Aug. 26 - 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 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."
Mr. Kim speculated that the leadership of North Korea would close the country more than usual to announce the death in their own way and to maintain order during a time of uncertainty over which of the three sons of Kim Jong Il, 62, might be chosen as his successor.
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. "Koh Young Hee has his heart, he loves her very much," a Japanese sushi chef, who worked until 2001 for Kim Jong Il, said in an interview in Tokyo last month. "I don't think he has another woman."
"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. "I have never seen anyone say no to Kim Jong Il, not even high-ranking officials."
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.
"If Koh Young Hee had not died at this moment, one of her two sons would be a high candidate for successor," said Kim Duk Hong, who defected in 1997. "But now that she is dead, all three sons are in the same position."
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. A graduate of a Swiss boarding school, he is widely seen as too Westernized for the fiercely nationalistic North Korea.
Further eclipsing his chances in the succession race, his mother, Sung Hye Lim, never married Mr. Kim and fell out of favor two decades ago. She died two years ago in Moscow, where she had been living in self-imposed exile.
"Now Kim Jong Nam might be the best candidate," continued Mr. Kim, the defector, who once worked for the Central Committee of the Korean Worker's Party. "He was most loved by Kim Jong Il and Kim Il Sung" - Kim Jong Il's father and political predecessor - "and has the most international sense of the three."
But Korea has hundreds of years of history of brutal dynastic politics, in which male family members have frequently killed one another in fights over the throne.
"All during the Chosun dynasty, the succession struggles were very severe," Dae Sook Suh, a political science professor at the University of Hawaii, said of a five-century dynasty that ended in 1910. "There were uncles killing nephews, and brothers killing brothers, all to stay in the line of succession."
N. Korea: Kim Jong-il's Current Wife Is Almost Certainly Dead
They're on top of it, aren't they?
Bet no one checked that "extremely expensive" coffin to be sure the French aren't sending WMD stuff to NK.
Am Chevy Chase and Fransico Franco is still dead!
Lol
an "extremely expensive" coffin... ?
Phone quality extremely bad. Same NK girl seems to pick up the phone whomever you call, even a fax machine was interrupted with the same chick. Probably public security bureau and being routed through one switchboard.
Hung up on me on three occasions. Asked a rapid "Chosun Minju Jui Inmin Kunghwa Guk?" ("Democratic People's Republic of Korea?") and got a yes, but very difficult to understand. One, at a hotel, did ask me "What room number?" in English. Sounds like a combination of failed Soviet telecom equipment and perhaps even an effort screen/shut off foreign telephone calls.
NO S*** NY Times
Hey Tiger I remember you reported that story few weeks ago DAMN you scoop NY TImes rack it
I didn't realize until now that Little Kimmy really hurting after her death
We should send him something
HMMMMM
We can send Kim Jong-il a custom-made expensive coffin for a small fat guy. Because he is going to die, probably much sooner than he wants to.:)
I wonder would Little Kimmy start hitting the Jack Daniels
If he was really in love with this lady he be downing the booze
I got idea HMMMMMM
Send that coffin with bottles of expensive whisky stuffed in it. That will do. He will drink to death, and be put in that coffin.
Waidaminnit here... Do the lofty philosophical underpinnings of the glorious Communist people's revolution provide for handing "The Succession" to the Fearless Leader's ***CHILDREN***???
I thought Communism was dedicated to overthrowing monarchies... but then I never could read Marx without falling asleep, so maybe I missed something.
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