Kim Jong-un hides Japanese identity of mother

Mark O'Neill July 23, 2025 16:27

The mother of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un was born in Osaka to a father who made uniforms for the Imperial Japanese Army and had to escape to North Korea to avoid arrest by police.

Ko Yong-hui ( 高容姬) was the favoured mistress of Kim Jong-il and gave him three children, of whom Jong-un was the second.

These explosive revelations are contained in a new book by Japanese author Yoji Gomi entitled “Ko Yong-hui: the Zainichi Korean Who Became Kim Jong-un’s Mother.” Zainichi means “in Japan”.

In North Korea’s rigid class system, the identity of Ko’s father puts him and her among the “hostile class”, the worse because he worked for the Japanese military.

This class system, known in Korean as songbun ( 成分), divides people into three classes based on their perceived loyalty to the government. Only the “loyal class” can live in Pyongyang, whose residents enjoy the country’s best living standards. The other two classes are “wavering” and “hostile”; they face restrictions of increasing severity.

This system means that the North Korean government must hide Ko’s history and family background from the public. Hostility to Japan has been the core principle of the regime since it was founded in September 1948.

Ko was born on June 26, 1952 in the Tsuruhashi district of Osaka, home to many Koreans. Japanese official records gave her the name of Takada Hime (高田姫))

In 1930, 419,000 Koreans were working in Japan. During World War Two, a further 670,000 Koreans were brought to Japan to work in factories and replace Japanese sent to the front. It is not clear when Ko’s father arrived in Japan. He worked in an Osaka sewing factory run by the Ministry of War.

After World War Two, he smuggled goods between Japan and South Korea and was once arrested in South Korea. Faced with the threat of deportation from Japan, he and his family moved to North Korea in 1962.

What saved Ko was her good looks and artistic talent. In 1972, she joined the Mansudae (萬壽臺) Art Troupe, one of the most prestigious in the country. It was there that she caught the eye of Kim Jong-il, son of Kim Il-sung, founder of North Korea, and his successor. She became his mistress/ At that time, he already had a wife and one other mistress.

According to one account, Kim Il-sung never accepted her as a possible mother of a future leader, because of her background and connections to Japan. This had to be hidden from the public.

As a member of the Art Troupe, she once went to Japan to perform. According to Gomi’s book, her relatives in Osaka attempted to meet her but she refused. One cousin asked why she was ignoring them. “You must be mistaken,” she said.

She gave Kim three children. Jong-un was the second, born in 1983 or 1984. Kim Jong-il already had three children by three different women.

Jong-un attended secondary school in Berne, Switzerland, where he developed a passion for the National Basketball Association, Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant.

His Japanese chief, Kenji Fujimoto, said that Jong-un also liked Yves St Laurent cigarettes, Johnny Walker whisky and drove a Mercedes-Benz 600 sedan.

His father chose him as successor out of his five children, and he took over in 2011.

According to French LCI television, when he took over, Jong-un showed a 90-minute documentary praising his mother to a small group of the ruling nomenklatura. It was not shown to the public. It was his attempt to show themt he was qualified for the top post.

His mother’s final years were not so happy. In 1997, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. But she declined a mastectomy, fearing that this would reduce her appeal to Jong-il.

She applied for a visa to have surgery at a specialist hospital in Houston, Texas. But this was refused. In 2004, she finally sought treatment in Paris, but it was too late. A rare photo of that period showed her in a wheelchair with dark sunglasses and a white hat.

She died in Paris in 2004, aged just 52. “She died a lonely death because of the North Korean regime,” Gomi said. He estimated that about 50 of Jong-un’s relatives still live in Japan.

Mark O'Neill

A Hong Kong-based writer, teacher and speaker.