Kim Song-ae

Born Kim Song-pal on 29 December 1924 in South Pyongan Province,[2][3] Kim Song-ae began her career as a clerical worker in the Ministry of National Defense where she first met Kim Il-sung in 1948. She was hired to work in his residence as an assistant to Kim Jong-suk, Kim Il-sung's first wife. After Kim Jong-suk's 1949 death, Kim Song-ae began managing Kim Il-sung's household and domestic life. During the Korean War she looked after Kim Jong-il and Kim Kyong-hui.[2] She married Kim Il-sung in 1952, although due to the war no formal ceremony was held. One source indicates Kim Il-sung had had an affair with her even before his first wife died. She gave birth to a daughter (Kim Kyong-jin, 1951) and two sons (Kim Pyong-il, 1954; Kim Yong-il, 1955).[4]

Kim Song-ae later rose in political power. From the mid 1960s until the mid 1970s, Kim Song-ae allegedly held a significant amount of political influence in North Korea.[5] As her tenure of political significance occurred in about the same period as that of Jiang Qing in China during the culture revolution, Jang Jin-sung referred to Kim Song-ae as the "North Korean mirror image of Jiang Qing".[5]

In 1965, she became vice-chairwoman of the Central Committee of the Korean Democratic Women's League (KDWL), and in 1971, she rose to be chairwoman.[6] In December 1972, she became a representative of the People’s Supreme Assembly.[6]

According to Jang Jin-sung, Kim Song-ae had the ambition to place her son, Kim Pyong-il in the position of successor to her spouse Kim Il-sung, rather than his son from his first marriage, Kim Jong-il.[5] In this, she was supposedly supported by a faction of the North Korean political elite, among them her brother Kim Kwang-hop, and Kim Il-sung's brother Kim Yong-ju, and opposed by the faction of her stepson Kim Jong-il.[5] In the 1970s, her influence was reportedly seen as excessive by the party, who started to curb it.[5] In parallel, her stepson Kim Jong-il became the designated heir of Kim Il-sung, and his faction worked to remove her from influence.[5][6] In 1976, Kim Song-ae lost her position as chair of the KDWL, which removed her communication channel to the public and effectively curbed her power base.[5] Reportedly, Kim Song-ae, as well as her brother-in-law Kim Yong-ju, who had supported her plans to place her son in the position of heir instead of Kim Jong-il, was placed in house arrest in 1981 upon the wish of the designated heir Kim Jong-il.[5]

In 1993, she was reinstated by Kim Jong-il as chair of the KDWL, but her position was purely symbolic and nominal, and she was removed a second time in 1998.[7] Since 1998, little information about her has reached the outside world.[8]

There are rumours that she was killed in a car accident in Beijing in June 2001.[8] Other reports claimed she was still alive as of July 2011, though in poor health, and that Kim Pyong-il returned to Pyongyang from his posting in Poland to visit her. In 2012, a report from a North Korean defector claimed that Kim Song-ae had been declared insane in the early 1990s, even before the death of Kim Il-sung, and since then been kept under supervision of a psychiatric nurse in her house arrest.[6]

She was later reported to have died in 2014,[9] a date which was confirmed by the Ministry of Unification in December 2018.[10]

• Grand Officer of the National Order of Mali, 18 May 1976[11]

• Order of Kim Il-sung, April 1982[12]

• National Order of the Republic (Burundi)[13]

• Order of the Star of the Romanian Socialist Republic (1st Class)[14]

• Kim Song-ae (1969). Let Us Women Become Revolutionary Fighters Infinitely Loyal to the Party and Reliable Builders of Socialism and Communism by Revolutionizing and Working-classizing Ourselves. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House. OCLC 253679297.
• — (1970). On the Women's Emancipation Movement in Korea. Report at the Meeting Held in Honour of the 25th Anniversary of the Founding of the Korean Democratic Women's Union, November 17, 1970. Pyongyang: Foreign Languages Publishing House. OCLC 1012367.

• Pak Chong-ae