Ryeo Won-gu

RYEO WON-GU (1928-2009). Ryeo Won-gu (also Yo Won-gu) was the third daughter of the anti-Japanese campaigner and political activist Yeo Un-hyeong (1885-1947). Yeo Un-hyeong was a cofounder of the exiled Korean Provisional Government in 1919 and helped to establish the Korean People's Republic in 1945. He was assassinated in Seoul in 1947. Before then, Ryeo and her older sister Ryeo Yeon-gu, had moved to Pyongyang, where they both remained for the rest of their lives. She studied in Moscow from 1946 to 1954 and then taught at Kim Chaek University of Technology. In 1981, she became a vice minister of education, but her most prominent roles were as co-chair of the Democratic Front for the Reunification of the Fatherland, from 1998, and as a vice chair of the Supreme People's Assembly, also from 1998. In general, she took over positions that her sister had held before she died in 1996. Ryeo thereafter regularly participated in North-South activities, and in August 2002, she was a member of the delegation from the Democratic People's Republic of Korea to the Liberation Day (15 August) celebrations in the Republic of Korea. On that occasion, when she laid a wreath on her father's grave, she spoke of the support she had received over the years from Kim Il Sung, his first wife, Kim Jeong-suk, and their son, Kim Jong Il. She was still active in the months leading up to her death in July 2009.

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