Kim Jong-un’s Defector Aunt, Ko Yong Suk Speaks Out About Life In the United States

The aunt of Kim Jong-un who defected nearly two decades ago to the United States has conducted an extensive interview with the Washington Post for the first time.  What I found most interesting was that she operates a dry cleaning business just like so many other Korean immigrants to the US do:

Wandering through Times Square, past the Naked Cowboy and the Elmos and the ticket touts, she could be any immigrant trying to live the American Dream.

A 60-year-old Korean woman with a soft perm and conservative clothes, she’s taking a weekend off from pressing shirts and hemming pants at the dry-cleaning business she runs with her husband.

But she’s not just any immigrant. She’s an aunt to Kim Jong Un, the young North Korean leader who has threatened to wipe out New York with a hydrogen bomb.

And for the past 18 years, since defecting from North Korea into the waiting arms of the CIA, she has been living an anonymous life here in the United States, with her husband and three children.

“My friends here tell me I’m so lucky, that I have everything,” Ko Yong Suk, as she was known when she was part of North Korea’s royal family, told The Washington Post on a recent weekend. “My kids went to great schools and they’re successful, and I have my husband, who can fix anything. There’s nothing we can envy.”

Her husband, previously known as Ri Gang, chimes in, laughing: “I think we have achieved the American Dream.”

This is the story of how one family went from the top of North Korea to middle America.

Breaking their silence in the United States, Ko and Ri spent almost 20 hours talking to two Washington Post reporters in New York City and then at their home several hours’ drive away. They were nervous about emerging from their anonymity; after all, there are Americans who analyze North Korea for a living and do not even know that the couple are here.  [Washington Post]

I highly recommend reading the whole thing at the link.  It is an interesting inside look at Kim Jong-un’s early years growing up considering that Ko Yong Suk helped to raise Kim Jong-il’s kids while they were attending school in Switzerland.  She says from an early age that Kim Jong-un had a fascination with finding out how things like boats and airplanes work.  He also had a short temper and if you can believe it he actually one time went on a hunger strike!  These personality traits are still evident today.

Amazingly they are speaking out now to stop rumors spread about them by the South Korean media.  Additionally her husband actually wants to travel to Pyongyang to meet with Kim Jong-un and act as an intermediary between the US and North Korea.  Good luck with that.