Another front-page article from the WSJ just confirming that asians are idiots.

Pyongyang Place: The Family Saga Of Kim Jong Il

10/10/03
Jilted Mistresses, Relatives In Exile -- and Murder; North Korean 'Sopranos'
By GORDON FAIRCLOUGH
Staff Reporter of THE WALL STREET JOURNAL

SEOUL, South Korea -- First, North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il started bringing one of his mistresses -- the mother of two of his sons -- along with him on visits to military bases. Then, last year, the North Korean army distributed a pamphlet praising her as "the respectful mother, who helps the commander-in-chief to carry on the spirit of the revolutionary family."

The message, according to South Korean intelligence analysts: The 62-year-old Mr. Kim, who for years waged a fierce family battle to assure his own rise to power as his father's successor, is paving the way to pass the crown to one of his sons.


As Mr. Kim engages in nuclear brinkmanship with the outside world, he is also maneuvering behind the scenes in Pyongyang in a domestic drama that swirls with allegations of jilted mistresses, exiled relatives and murder. It is a dysfunctional family saga that intelligence analysts and Mr. Kim's opponents say reveals a lot about Mr. Kim and the way he governs North Korea. "These guys are the 'Sopranos,' " says one senior Bush administration official.

North Korea is very much a family enterprise. Mr. Kim's relatives are among his most trusted aides. His sister, Kim Kyong Hui, runs the light-industry division of the Communist Party. And his brother-in-law, Jang Song Thaek, helps oversee the security apparatus that suppresses opponents of Mr. Kim's rule.

The dictator's eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, the progeny of an affair with a well-known North Korean movie actress, spends much of his time in China, according to South Korean intelligence analysts. These analysts allege the younger Mr. Kim has been involved in sales of North Korean missiles and other weapons as well as money laundering and the distribution of counterfeit currency for the regime.

The court of Kim Jong Il also boasts rivalries, dissension and shenanigans worthy of Versailles, or at least Peyton Place.

Mr. Kim's half-brother, Kim Pyong Il, a onetime rival for the throne, has lived in a sort of exile as a diplomat in various Eastern European countries since the late 1980s. He is now North Korea's ambassador to Poland.

ALL IN THE FAMILY







Another of the dictator's relatives, Lee Il Nam, defected to Seoul and wrote a book about his childhood as a member of Mr. Kim's household. In 1997, according to South Korean police, North Korean assassins killed Mr. Lee -- who, fearing retribution, had changed his name and undergone cosmetic surgery to hide his true identity. Mr. Lee was shot in the head and chest by two men waiting for him outside his apartment, according to Hong Sung Sang, a police counterintelligence officer who led the investigation of the case.

The murderers escaped. But a captured North Korean spy later confirmed under interrogation by South Korean authorities that three of his colleagues had been sent from Pyongyang to execute the defector. Mr. Lee was killed on Feb. 15, 1997, eight months after the publication of his memoir, "Taedong River Royal Family," and the day before Kim Jong Il turned 56. "They killed him to keep him from talking about the family," says Mr. Hong. "It was a birthday gift for Kim Jong Il."

North Korea's government-controlled media maintain a studious silence about Kim Jong Il's family life. North Korea watchers outside the country still disagree over how many children he has, what their names are and even where they live.

Mr. Kim himself was born in the Russian Far East, where his mother and his father, Kim Il Sung, spent World War II with a group of Korean fighters at a Soviet army camp. His mother died when he was 8. Kim Il Sung eventually remarried and started a new family.

By the time Mr. Kim was in his 20s, he found himself in a contest for supremacy with his uncle, Kim Il Sung's younger brother. "It was a competition to see who could do the best job praising and glorifying Kim Il Sung and boosting his ego," says Hwang Jang Yop, one of the highest-ranking North Koreans to defect. "Kim Jong Il won."


Kim Jong Il (front, left) and his first-born son, Kim Jong Nam (front, right), with the sister and other family members of a late mistress, in a 1981 photo.


Key to his success was a series of movies he produced lauding his father, including one called "Sea of Blood" that cataloged the elder Kim's exploits fighting the Japanese, according to Sohn Kwang Joo, a research fellow at the Institute of National Unification Policy, a think tank connected with South Korea's National Intelligence Service.

As his father's heir apparent, Kim Jong Il began to consolidate power and intimidate rivals. He also became preoccupied with his own safety, apparently suspecting that his relatives were plotting against him. He recruited a large corps of bodyguards who were told that the most likely threats to Mr. Kim's life would come from members of his own family, says Lee Young Kook, who protected Mr. Kim from 1978 until 1988.

"We were ordered not to tell relatives his whereabouts or allow them into his residences or offices," says Mr. Lee, who arrived in South Korea in 2000. Mr. Kim was especially concerned about his stepmother, who was eager to advance the position of her own son, Kim Jong Il's half-brother Kim Pyong Il. "She had a lot of power and Kim Jong Il thought she was a threat," Mr. Lee says, adding: "He only trusted his sister."

In the early 1970s, Mr. Kim began an affair with Sung Hae Lim, a well-known North Korean movie actress. According to the memoir by the murdered Mr. Lee, Mr. Kim initially hid the relationship from his father. He did so even after he and Ms. Sung had a son, Kim Jong Nam. Also during those years, Mr. Kim married a woman named Kim Yong Suk, with whom he eventually had a daughter. He also began his love affair with Ko Young Hui, a Japanese-born Korean dancer. (Ms. Sung began making a number of prolonged visits to Moscow, where she is believed to have died in 2002.)

Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, Kim Jong Nam, son of Mr. Kim and Ms. Sung, appeared to have the inside track on succeeding his father. He was looked after by Mr. Kim's younger sister and traveled among his father's villas. At one point, according to Mr. Lee's book, Kim Jong Nam visited his father in his Pyongyang office. He sat in his father's desk chair, while his father told him: "Later, when you grow up, this is where you'll sit and give orders."

After Kim Jong Nam was caught entering Japan with a false Dominican passport in 2001, he was largely cut out of the regime's inner circle, South Korean intelligence officials say. Kim Jong Nam said at the time that he wanted to visit Disneyland. Intelligence officials say Kim Jong Nam frequently visited Japan, where he had a house and enjoyed partying far from the gaze of his father's minions. He was deported to China, where analysts say he continues to spend most of his time.

Kim Jong Nam's fall opened the way for the sons of Ms. Ko, the mistress now in the spotlight with her visits to military units and positive propaganda. Both Kim Jong Chul, born in 1981, and Kim Jong Oon, born in 1983, were sent to boarding school in Switzerland as children and then are thought to have returned to continue their education in Pyongyang. A South Korean intelligence analyst says Mr. Kim appears to favor the younger of the two, Kim Jong Oon.

This week, however, a conservative Japanese newspaper, Sankei Shimbun, reported that Ms. Ko had suffered head injuries in a car accident in Pyongyang last month and was hospitalized. Officials of South Korea's Unification Ministry, which oversees relations with North Korea, said they could not confirm the report. The National Intelligence Service would say only that it is looking into the matter.

Were Ms. Ko out of the picture, that would cast doubt on the political futures of her sons Kim Jong Chul and Kim Jong Oon, and could open another chapter in the Kim family drama.