Ko Yong-hui

Ko Yong-hui (; ; 26 June 1952 – 13 August 2004),

Biography Born in Ikuno Korea Town of Osaka, Japan, Ko's birth date and Japanese name in Japanese official records are 26 June 1952 and Takada Hime (高田姫), respectively. Her father, Ko Gyon-tek, worked in an Osaka sewing factory run by Japan's ministry of war, a 16th-generation descendant of the Joseon scholar official, Ko Tŭkchong. Her mother was also Korean. She, along with her family, moved to North Korea in May 1961 or 1962 as part of a repatriation program. In the early 1970s, she began working as a dancer for the Mansudae Art Troupe in Pyongyang.

It is thought that Ko and Kim Jong Il first met in 1972. In 1981, Ko had a son named Kim Jong-chul, her first child with Kim. It was Kim's fourth child, after daughter Kim Hye-gyong (born 1968 to Hong Il-chon), son Kim Jong-nam (born 1971 to Song Hye-rim), and daughter Kim Sol-song (born 1974 to Kim Young-sook). Kim Jong Il's second child with Ko, the present North Korean supreme leader Kim Jong Un, followed one to three years after Jong-chul. Their third child, Kim Yo Jong, a daughter, was believed to be about 23 in 2012; however, the birth year of Kim Yo Jong is also given as 1987.

Cult of personality Under North Korea's songbun ascribed status system, Ko's Korean-Japanese heritage made her part of the lowest "hostile" class. Furthermore, her father worked in a sewing factory for the Imperial Japanese Army, which gave her the "lowest imaginable status qualities" for a North Korean. These previous attempts at idolization failed and were stopped after Kim Jong Il's 2008 stroke. Making her identity public would have undermined the Kim family's pure bloodline,

Japanese journalist Yoji Gomi, author of Ko Yong-hui: The Zainichi Korean Who Became Kim Jong-un's Mother, based on interviews with Ko's relatives in Osaka, speculates that Kim Jong Un's highly visible promotion of his daughter, Kim Ju-ae, may stem from a psychological complex linked to his inability to officially canonize his mother.