The mystery of Kim Jong Un's missing aunt Early this year, the world was appalled by a particularly garish headline from the Hermit Kingdom: North Korea's young despot Kim Jong Un had his traitorous uncle fed to a pack of wild dogs. That report, as WorldViews reported, was likely not true. What was clear was that Kim's uncle, Jang Song Thaek, was executed last December. His titles were stripped and he was publicly shamed. A longtime stalwart of the regime, he was pilloried by Pyongyang's Orwellian mouthpiece for being "worse than a dog," "despicable human scum," and "dreaming different dreams." A power struggle had taken place within the pariah state; Jang had lost, a victim of either his nephew's ruthlessness (or caprice) or of courtly intrigue in Pyongyang's halls of power. But what of Jang's wife? Kim Kyong Hui is the sister of Kim's later father Kim Jong Il and perhaps the most prominent female figure in the regime. But she has not been seen since roughly around the time of her husband's fall. Rumors swirled. Some reports suggested she and Jang had long been estranged, and that she remained in her nephew's favor. Others reported that she was in a "vegetative state" following an operation to remove a tumor. But a new revelation from a North Korean defector, cited by the Wall Street Journal's Jonathan Cheng, indicates that she has been dead for more than a year. Kim's aunt, the defector says, poisoned herself Dec. 17, five days after her husband was executed and on the second anniversary of her brother's death. The source is Kim Heung Kwang, a former computer science professor in Pyongyang who defected to South Korea in 2004 and heads the North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity organization. He pays contacts within North Korea for information, and was credited for one notable scoop: the revaluation of North Korea's currency in 2009. The WSJ's Cheng elaborates: Now, Mr. Kim says, his sources inside the country - whom he says he pays for information - are saying that Ms. Kim has been dead for nearly a year. That would explain why she hasn't been seen publicly in North Korea's official press. It would also explain, he says, why Ms. Kim was edited out of reruns of an official documentary in April - only to reappear in reruns two weeks later. "They would never do that to somebody who was still alive," Mr. Kim said in an interview. Mr. Kim, who credits his sources with the information, says that Ms. Kim killed herself in anger. "She didn't have the will to live," he said. Of course, like so much glimpsed through the looking glass into North Korea, it's very difficult to know if any of this is true. Just see the feverish speculation earlier this year that surrounded Kim Jong Un's own absence from public photo ops. Was he severely ill? Had he been ousted by some sort of coup? The North Korean leader returned in mid-October, clutching a cane, with few much the wiser.