Kim Yo Jong’s face flickers across screens in Pyongyang, a smile etched in stone. She is the sister, the mouthpiece, the enforcer. But what of Ko Yong Hui, the mother who vanished?
British intelligence analysts have pieced together a shadow portrait of the woman who shaped North Korea’s darkest decades. Her story is not one of power, but of silence. Ko Yong Hui was born in Osaka, Japan, to a family of ethnic Koreans.
She moved to Pyongyang in the 1960s, part of a repatriation scheme. By the 1980s, she had caught the eye of Kim Jong Il. She bore him two sons: Kim Jong Un and Kim Jong Chol.
Then she disappeared. Analysts believe she was forced into seclusion, her influence erased from official history. The regime does not tolerate rivals, not even a mother.
Her silence is a weapon. It allows the Kim dynasty to craft its own myth, untainted by maternal sentiment. But intelligence reports suggest her absence has left a void.
Kim Jong Un’s brutality, his paranoia, his desperate need for loyalty: these are the marks of a son who never had a mother’s love. Or perhaps she is alive, sequestered in a villa, a ghost in the palace. Either way, Ko Yong Hui is the regime’s darkest secret.
The West sees only the missile tests, the nuclear threats. But ask the women of Pyongyang, who sell potatoes in the market, who mend clothes in dim light. They know that silence is the most powerful currency in a dictatorship.
And Ko Yong Hui holds the reserves.
