Why doesn’t North Korean leader Kim Jong Un talk about his mother Ko Yong Hu?

Korean history, according to popular belief, begins at Mount Paektu – a mountain on the border between China and North Korea, said to be the birthplace of Dangun, the legendary founder of Korea’s first kingdom.

Thousands of years later, the founder of North Korea, Kim Il Sung, reportedly used the mountain as a hideout while fighting the Japanese. His son Kim Jong Il is said to have been born on those sacred slopes – although reports suggest he was actually born in Russia – decades after the mountain was used to legitimize the Kim dynasty.

“Kim Jong Un became the heir apparent in his 20s, despite his lack of success, simply because of his bloodline,” wrote North Korean diplomat Ryu Hyun-wo, in his book Kim Jong Un’s Secret Vault.

But the reality of Kim’s mother’s lineage paints a different picture.

Hundreds of kilometers away from Mount Paektu is the city of Osaka, Japan’s historic capital and the birthplace of Kim’s mother, Ko Yong Hui.

According to biographers, Ko was born in Osaka in 1952 to parents from Jeju Island, off the southern coast of South Korea.

As residents of Japan, Ko’s family were “Zainichi Koreans”: immigrants from Japan’s 1910-1945 colonial era of the peninsula.

But when she was 10 years old, Ko’s family emigrated to North Korea.

In the year They were among an estimated 93,000 Koreans who went to North Korea between 1959 and 1984.

Immigrants to the north were initially viewed with envy as they brought cash, clothing and furniture from the country’s capitalist neighbor to the south.

But they were given the name “Jaipo” for a group that was thought to be infected with foreign dangerous ideas.

North Korean society is deeply hierarchical, with some analysts comparing it to a caste system. And in this strict social classification – known as shangbun – jjaepo is the “indecisive class” somewhere between the mainstream and hostile classes.

They are subject to intense government surveillance and are often denied access to good universities or promising jobs.

It is a stark contrast to the pact’s narrative that the Kim family has long promoted.

“The bloodline of the Pact is seen as sacred,” said Kim Hyeung-soo of the Northern Research Association. “So the idea that the leader is Jaipo’s son is implausible.”