The aunt of Kim Jong-un who defected nearly two decades ago to the United States has conducted an extensive interview with the Washington Post for the first time. What I found most interesting was that she operates a dry cleaning business just like so many other Korean immigrants to the US do:
Wandering through Times Square, past the Naked Cowboy and the Elmos and the ticket touts, she could be any immigrant trying to live the American Dream.
A 60-year-old Korean woman with a soft perm and conservative clothes, she’s taking a weekend off from pressing shirts and hemming pants at the dry-cleaning business she runs with her husband.
But she’s not just any immigrant. She’s an aunt to Kim Jong Un, the young North Korean leader who has threatened to wipe out New York with a hydrogen bomb.
And for the past 18 years, since defecting from North Korea into the waiting arms of the CIA, she has been living an anonymous life here in the United States, with her husband and three children.
“My friends here tell me I’m so lucky, that I have everything,” Ko Yong Suk, as she was known when she was part of North Korea’s royal family, told The Washington Post on a recent weekend. “My kids went to great schools and they’re successful, and I have my husband, who can fix anything. There’s nothing we can envy.”
Her husband, previously known as Ri Gang, chimes in, laughing: “I think we have achieved the American Dream.”
This is the story of how one family went from the top of North Korea to middle America.
Breaking their silence in the United States, Ko and Ri spent almost 20 hours talking to two Washington Post reporters in New York City and then at their home several hours’ drive away. They were nervous about emerging from their anonymity; after all, there are Americans who analyze North Korea for a living and do not even know that the couple are here. [Washington Post]
I highly recommend reading the whole thing at the link. It is an interesting inside look at Kim Jong-un’s early years growing up considering that Ko Yong Suk helped to raise Kim Jong-il’s kids while they were attending school in Switzerland. She says from an early age that Kim Jong-un had a fascination with finding out how things like boats and airplanes work. He also had a short temper and if you can believe it he actually one time went on a hunger strike! These personality traits are still evident today.
Amazingly they are speaking out now to stop rumors spread about them by the South Korean media. Additionally her husband actually wants to travel to Pyongyang to meet with Kim Jong-un and act as an intermediary between the US and North Korea. Good luck with that.
North Korea’s top leader Kim Jong-un (C), wearing a short-sleeved shirt, pours underground ultra-saline water onto a salt field during a visit to a saltern in the North’s South Pyongan Province in this photo released by the North’s state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper on May 24, 2016. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
Some of you ROK Heads out there still have a chance of marrying Kim Jong-un’s sister if you are interested. It also appears that the ubiquitous “car accident” continues to be a problem for regime figures in North Korea:
Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un and a central committee member of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK), is not married, a high-level North Korean official-turned-defector said.
The Voice of America (VOA) reported Thursday that the 29-year-old sister Kim has yet to tie the knot, citing its interview with the anonymous defector, whom it reported had defected to the South last year with his father, also a senior member of the North Korean government.
A Unification Ministry official said the government wouldn’t confirm the veracity of the report.
The VOA’s report on Kim Yo-jong’s single life came after many reports by South Korean media that she was married to the son of Choe Ryong-hae, who returned to the power circle during the recent seventh congress with his entry into the five-member presidium of the political bureau of the WPK’s central committee.
The defector, who reportedly had worked for the North’s coal export business with China, said Choe’s son had actually died in a car accident in January 2013. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
Via a reader tip comes news that Kim Jong-un may have given up smoking. Considering that this is based off of public pictures this could just be a propaganda campaign by North Korea where pictures of Kim Jong-un smoking are no longer allowed to be published:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is not known for a clean, healthy lifestyle. This is a young man whose ballooning waistline and sudden removal from the public eye almost two years ago was widely (if dubiously) attributed to a powerful addiction to Swiss cheese. Now, however, there is widespread suspicion that the North Korean supreme leader may have finally kicked one of his nastiest habits: smoking.
According to reports in South Korean news outlets like Yonhap and Korea Herald, Kim hasn’t been pictured with a cigarette for at least two months. A quick look at recently released pictures appears to confirm this: The last hint of a cigarette was in mid-May, when Kim was shown sitting next to an ashtray.
There are plenty of reasons to be suspicious about the idea that the North Korean leader may have given up his beloved smokes, however. South Korean media reports on the North are often unreliable. Additionally, Kim’s relationship with cigarettes goes back a long time: He is thought to have begun smoking when he was 15 years old. Over the years, he has frequently been photographed chain-smoking at official functions, much like his father, the late Kim Jong Il, had been before him. [Washington Post]
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un tours a tree nursery in Pyongyang with some officals in this combined image released on May 15, 2016, by the Rodong Sinmun, the organ of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. It marks Kim’s second public outing since the closing of the party’s congress on Monday. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap).
Over at Rimjin-gang they have an interview posted with one of their North Korean contacts in regards to the recent Workers’ Party Convention. The interview concludes with the North Korean explaining why the Kim regime will never implement Chinese style reforms that would improve the well being of the people:
The reporters for the congress should report only about ‘the developing Pyongyang.’ Ordinary people in Pyongyang earn a living through a business. A woman in the photo is selling Chinese made sausages. Taken by Koo Gwang-ho at Moranbong District on June 2011. (ASIA PRESS)
Q: What is your expectation from Kim Jong-un regime?
A: I hope that they would open the door like China. Frankly speaking, if they do so, there would be no people who flee from their hometown (North Korean defectors). I don’t know why they fear so much about opening, or reform. While drinking, an official, one of my acquaintances, said: “If we open like China, we would be overthrown. So the top never open our door.”
Q: Do you mean that they don’t try to reform since they know their regime to be overthrown even if the opening would bring better off for the people?
A: Absolutely! Those son-of-bitches (Kim Jong-un and his followers) think that they should survive to the last. That is why they don’t. (open the door) [Rimjin-gang]
Clad in a suit and accompanied by key aides, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un tours a machinery and equipment exhibition in Pyongyang in this combined image released on May 13, 2016, by the Rodong Sinmun, the organ of the North’s ruling Workers’ Party of Korea. It marks Kim’s first public outing since the closing of the party’s congress on Monday. (For Use Only in the Republic of Korea. No Redistribution) (Yonhap)
Kim Jong-un is once again making it pretty clear to the rest of the world that he has no intention to ever denuclearize:
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un said his country will not use nuclear weapons as long as the country’s sovereignty is not threatened and called his regime “a responsible nuclear state” at the seventh congress of the Workers’ Party in Pyongyang.
“Our republic will not use a nuclear weapon unless its sovereignty is encroached upon by any aggressive hostile forces with nukes,” Kim was quoted as saying by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Sunday. Kim made the remark in a report on the achievements of the Workers’ Party during the congress. KCNA didn’t specify whether Kim made the remark on Friday or Saturday.
It was considered a clear rebuff to calls from the international community that he drops North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. [Joong Ang Ilbo]
