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Kim Seong-ae

Secretary and second wife of Kim Il Sung and mother of Kim Gyeong-jin (1953), Kim Pyeong-il (1955), and Kim Yeong-il (1957).

Biography

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KIM SEONG-AE (1924- ). Secretary and second wife of Kim Il Sung and mother of Kim Gyeong-jin (1953), Kim Pyeong-il (1955), and Kim Yeong-il (1957). She attended Pyongyang Women's University and Kim Il Sung University, where she graduated in English. She began working as a secretary to Kim Il Sung in the late 1940s. It is not clear if she and Kim Il Sung were formally married, but they seem to have been living as husband and wife from 1953, and there are reports that she was his mistress before the death of his first wife, Kim Jeong -suk, in 1949. In the 1960s, she became vice chair of the Central Committee of the Korean Democratic Women's League and was its chair from the mid-1970s. She reportedly pressed for one of her sons to succeed Kim Il Sung, without success. She appeared as a member of Kim Il Sung's funeral committee in 1994, but otherwise has disappeared from view since her resignation from the chair of the Korean Women's League in 1998. According to Hwang Jang-yeop, the most senior defector from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, she and her children were referred to as an "offshoot clique" and were ostracized by Kim Jong Il and the rest of the leadership. She is reported to live in seclusion in a villa in South Pyeongan Province. Radio Free Asia reported that she was killed in an automobile accident in Beijing in 2001, but more recent reports have said that she is still alive and that her son, Kim Pyeong-il, had returned to Pyongyang to visit her because she was ill.

All rights reserved. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior written permission of the publisher. (Historical Dictionary of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, by James E. Hoare, published by RLPG Books, appears by permission of the author and publisher).

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