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Recently, the South Korean media, citing unnamed sources in the North Korean bureaucracy, reported that Kim Ok (the former wife of the now deceased dictator Kim Jong-il) has been removed from all her official positions. The same fate is also said to have befallen her father Kim Hyo who was the deputy head of the Korean Worker's Party's finance department.
The reports cite unnamed sources and we cannot therefore verify such information. Nonetheless, taking into account what is known about Kim Jong-il's personal life, reports of Kim Ok's fall seem all too plausible.
The late Generalissimo Kim Jong-il had a rather unorthodox family life. In his youth, he had a reputation for being a playboy, but it is widely believed that in his mid-20s, the future North Korean leader married a woman who was chosen for him by his father. This marriage however, if it ever existed, did not last for long.
In the late 1960s, Kim Jong-il fell in love with a beautiful actress Seong Hye-rim who could be described as North Korea's Marylyn Monroe. At the time she was married, but, predictably enough, divorce was easy enough to obtain in such a situation. They lived together and soon had a son, named Kim Jong-nam.
However, things did not work out well for Seong. She was never accepted by her father-in-law, the Great Leader, Generalissimo Kim Il-sung. The reasons for this are not clear, but it seems that the reason might have been her origin. Seong was born to a South Korean communist couple who came to the North in the late 1940s, and such people in spite of all their ideological commitment were seen as inherently suspicious in North Korea.
At any rate, the couple broke up and Seong moved to Moscow where she lived in comfortable exile until her death in 2002.
Soon afterwards, Kim Jong-il moved in with his next girl friend, Ko Young-hee ― the mother of the current North Korean leader, Marshall Kim Jong-un. It seems that Kim Jong-il was attracted to charming women with somewhat suspicious political backgrounds, since Ko was born to an ethnic Korean family in Japan. Like some 95,000 Koreans in Japan, she moved to North Korea, in the early 1960s. In North Korea, such an origin was seen as somewhat politically suspicious, but this did not prevent Ko from becoming a prominent dancer.
Starting from around 1980, Ko was actually the permanent partner of Kim Jong-il, even though it remains unclear whether they have ever officially registered their marriage. From what little is known about Kim Jong-il's personal life, it seems that the late North Korean strongman has never entered a formally registered marriage.
Like Seong, Ko died young, in 2004, leaving behind two sons, one of whom would eventually become Kim Jong-il's successor. It seems that in the long run, Ko is destined for a posthumous cult. However, so far, Ko has never been mentioned in the North Korean media ― though she, as the mother of the supreme leader, appeared in some documentary footage.
So after Ko's death, Kim Jong-il obviously chose another girlfriend who was some twenty years younger than he. Kim Ok was one of Kim Jong-il's secretaries, and this gave her some political clout.
Kim Ok must have come from an elite family since she would never have worked in Kim Jong-il's secretariat otherwise. However not much is known about her origins or background. Kim Hyok, her father, was appointed deputy head of the KWP's finance department.
It seems that Kim Ok never managed to create her own powerbase, even if we presume that she ever had such ambitions. Perhaps she simply did not stay next to Kim Jong-il long enough, but at any rate, after Kim's sudden death in December 2011 she was clearly marginalized.
Not much is known about relations between Kim Ok and Kim Jong-un, though one might surmise that he was not very fond of his common law stepmother. On the other hand, there were rumors that Kim Ok once was a close friend of Ko, Kim Jong-un's mother. But all this is essentially speculation ― we do not know much about North Korean inner circle.
Professor Andrei Lankov was born in St. Petersburg, Russia, and now teaches at Kookmin University in Seoul. You can reach him at anlankov@yahoo.com.
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