TOKYO, Aug. 26 -- South Korean officials said Thursday that they have launched an investigation into reports that the woman considered to be North Korean leader Kim Jong Il's most influential wife has died after a long battle with breast cancer.
News that Ko Young Hee -- idolized in North Korea as "the respected mother" of the nation -- apparently succumbed to her illness was first reported Wednesday on the Web site of a leading South Korean investigative journalist for the Seoul-based Monthly Chosun magazine. South Korea's government-owned KBS TV followed up Thursday with a similar report, citing unnamed diplomatic sources in Beijing.
The Japanese-born Ko, 52, has been viewed as the foremost of at three women considered to be among Kim's wives or consorts -- although it remains unclear whether he officially married any of them. Little is known about Ko, but details about her life were provided by U.S. and South Korean analysts who specialize on North Korea.
Ko is believed to have been suffering from breast cancer for several years and her imminent death has been widely anticipated in intelligence circles following her return to North Korea after a reported hospitalization in Paris in April. Officials in Seoul said they are still trying to confirm her death. Unconfirmed reports in the South Korean media indicated that the North Koreans have ordered from France a custom-built coffin for her body.
"We are now in the middle of investigating the issue" of her reported death, a South Korean intelligence source said Thursday.
Information related to the totalitarian Kim and his family is closely guarded in secretive North Korea, where the official press in Pyongyang remained mum on the reports.
Analysts say Ko's death, if confirmed, could have bearing on the selection of an eventual successor to the Kim dynasty. Kim, 62, inherited his post from his father, Kim Il Sung, following the death of North Korea's founder in 1994 in the first ever succession by bloodline in a communist nation. Now, intelligence officials believe one of Kim Jong Il's three sons -- including two mothered by Ko -- are in the running to succeed him.
In a country where Kim rules in part through claims of divinity, Ko herself became the subject of a glorification campaign beginning in the summer of 2002 and had been using her status and influence with Kim and the military to ensure that one of her sons -- Kim Jong Chul, 23, and Kim Jong Woong, 19 -- is picked as successor. During the campaign to elevate Ko's stature, the North Korean military has been celebrating the former professional dancer with lofty slogans and songs. Any slight to her name is considered a high crime in North Korea.
Kim and Ko first met, according to the intelligence sources, during a private party in the 1970s in which Ko was performing. It is believed that he had two wives at that time.
The sources say Ko's sons are vying for the successor slot with Kim Jong Il's eldest son, Kim Jong Nam, 33, whose mother, Sung Hae Rim, died in a Moscow hospital in 2002.
A year earlier, Kim Jong Nam was arrested in Japan for using a Dominican passport in an attempt to visit Tokyo Disneyland -- a disgrace that analysts say forced him into a period of exile in China, Southeast Asia and Europe and may have cost him the top job in Pyongyang.
However, U.S. and South Korean intelligence officials now believe Kim Jong Nam has returned to Pyongyang and is apparently taking a lead role in running North Korea's secret police. Kim's eldest son is said to have had a stormy relationship with Ko.
Some experts say that the campaign to deify her while she was still ill may signal that Kim has already settled on naming one of her two sons as the next leader of North Korea.
But others argue that her death may in fact help pave the way for Kim Jong Nam -- who as eldest son would have priority as successor through Korean family tradition -- to convince his father to anoint him.
Ko, the daughter of a Korean immigrant in Japan, moved to North Korea in the 1960s and has been considered to be one of her husband's closest confidants. Analysts voiced some concern Thursday that her death may further disturb the reclusive North Korean leader at a critical time.
Kim is in the midst of a high-stakes standoff with Washington and neighboring nations in Northeast Asia over his highly developed nuclear weapons programs. North Korea has held three rounds of unsuccessful disarmament talks in Beijing with the United States, China, Russia, Japan and South Korea, but has cast doubt in several official statements over the past week about its willingness to continue those talks -- citing what it calls the Bush administration's "hostile policy" against Pyongyang.
On Thursday, South Korean Deputy Foreign Minister Lee Soo Hyuck said in a speech in Seoul that serious progress in the talks is unlikely until after the U.S. presidential election.
"Ko was a important person, and if it's true that she has died, then there will be some degree of impact," said Osamu Eya, a Tokyo-based North Korean specialist. "But there won't be major changes. Kim Jong Il will continue to rule with an iron fist."
Cho reported from Seoul.
