Brothers of North Korea’s Kim Jong Eun notably absent

The agent said the plan unraveled because he couldn’t track down Jong Nam in China, according to court documents.

‘Zero power, zero influence’

Gallery

In this photo taken June 4, 2010, Kim Jong Nam, the eldest son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, waves after his first-ever interview with South Korean media in Macau. Click through for more photos from inside North Korea.

Little is known about the true relationships between Kim Jong Eun and his brothers. Kim Jong Il’s seven children — born to his official wife and a series of mistresses — were raised in separate households across the country. A former Kim family sushi chef, Kenji Fujimoto, said last month in Tokyo that Jong Nam and Jong Eun have never met.

Jong Nam — Kim Jong Il’s child from an illicit relationship with an actress — was raised in near-isolation, according to the memoir of an aunt who helped raise the boy and later defected. Jong Nam had a massive playroom of toys, restocked annually by a team of globe-trotting purchasers. But Jong Nam felt he was living in a “luxury prison,” according to the memoir. When, as a teenager, he had an unsanctioned relationship of his own, his father threatened to send him to the coal mines.

Still, analysts presumed that Jong Nam, as the oldest son, was the heir apparent. But his chances probably evaporated in 2001 when he tried to enter Japan — with the hopes of visiting Disneyland — with a fake Dominican Republic passport. Jong Nam has since lived overseas.

Fujimoto, who briefly returned to Pyongyang last summer and met with Kim Jong Eun, said, “At present, in North Korea, Mr. Kim Jong Nam possesses zero power, zero influence.”

Experts say Jong Chul and Jong Eun, born to the same mother, might be closer. They attended the same international school in Bern, Switzerland, with several years of overlap, and later the same military university in Pyongyang.

Their mother, Ko Young Hui, was neither Kim Jong Il’s first love nor his official wife — he met her when she was performing in a state dance troupe — but many researchers say she was his favorite. Almost 10 years ago, state media began referring to her as the nation’s “respected mother.” North Korea watchers say the designation was significant: They thought her older boy, Jong Chul, was being groomed as successor.

Experts think that Kim Jong Il remained married to his official wife — Kim Young Sook — throughout his relationship with Ko Young Hui. Young Sook had only one child, a daughter.

How Kim Jong Eun outmaneuvered his brother to gain control of the country is unclear, with speculation based on the frailest of character sketches because North Korea has managed to keep a near-perfect seal on biographical information about Jong Chul.

Fujimoto, in a 2003 tell-all book about life with the Kims, described the young Jong Chul as effeminate and uninterested in politics. Chinese experts and visitors to North Korea also have been quoted — in State Department cables released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks and in the Japanese media — as describing Jong Chul as a video game devotee who was often sick.

Around 2005, experts began to say that Jong Eun was favored by his father.

Some experts say that Jong Chul could have an unlisted position in the Workers’ Party, based on rumors from high-level defectors, and that he could one day emerge publicly.

“But right now,” said Cheong Seong-chang, an expert on North Korean leadership at the Sejong Institute on the outskirts of Seoul, “he is supporting his brother by staying silent and keeping out of the public eye.”

Yoonjung Seo in Seoul and Yuki Oda in Tokyo contributed to this report.