Ko Tae Mun, Ko Chung Hee, and the Osaka Family Origins of North Korean Successor Kim Jong Un
Kokita Kiyohito, Tessa Morris-Suzuki and Mark Selden
The following article by Kokita Kiyohito, on the family origins of Kim Jong Un, the leader designate of North Korea, is illuminating above all for the language, assumptions and treatment of issues related to North Korea in contemporary Japanese media, including the Asahi. Two brief commentaries locate some of the issues in broader perspective. The headline and article are taken from the Asahi’s weekly Aera; photos have been provided from other sources. The major story addressed in the commentary by Tessa Morris-Suzuki is the collaboration of the Japanese government and the International Red Cross in arranging the migration of more than 93,000 Korean residents of Japan, who had been deprived of Japanese citizenship following Japan’s wartime defeat, to North Korea. Mark Selden examines a range of issues related to the perspective of the Japanese journalist on Zainichi Koreans and North Korea.
Osaka Black Mark in Kim's Life?
Osaka--Without fail, North Korea's propaganda machine deifies any location associated with the Kim dynasty, but the birthplace of the mother of future leader Kim Jong Un is unlikely to be accorded such reverence.
In any event, the sad history of her family in Osaka is hardly the stuff of legend.
Specifically, Ko Young Hee came from Osaka's Tsuruhashi district, an area that for decades has had a thriving Korean community.
Tsuruhashi Shopping Center, Osaka, today
According to a resident of the neighborhood, someone linked with North Korea recently came to check on the site of her birthplace, long an empty lot.
Kim Jong Un is the third son of North Korean leader Kim Jong Il and the grandson of Kim Il Sung, the founder of North Korea. In September, Kim Jong Un was anointed heir apparent.
His mother was born in June 1953, a month before a cease-fire agreement was reached in the Korean War.
Her father was called Ko Tae Mun. He was born in 1920 in Jeju island when the Korean Peninsula was under Japan's colonial rule. Jeju Island is now part of South Korea.
Ko Tae Mun came to Japan when he was 13 to join his father.
An elderly resident of Tsuruhashi said a famous black market in the district in the immediate aftermath of World War II was controlled by Korean nationals.
"Many of those individuals walked around as if they owned the place. The Japanese seemed to take a step back. (Ko), who would use a nearby bathhouse, always walked around with a proud bearing."
Ko learned judo from a Japanese while living in Osaka.
The resident recalled: "Ko's wife did sewing at home. Many of the Koreans living here came from Jeju. His wife was a hard worker, but her husband was always drinking and doing as he pleased. There were many households like that."
Ko often visited a dojo that was on the first floor of a building that housed a newspaper for a Korean organization on the second floor.
A Korean national in his 80s who worked at the newspaper said: "Four Korean nationals often gathered at the first floor judo hall to teach judo. It was said that when all four were around, they had nothing to be afraid of."
One of those individuals was Ko.
The division in the Korean Peninsula led to the creation of South Korea and North Korea in 1948.
Perhaps because he was having difficulties making a living solely from judo, Ko in 1956 started his own professional wrestling group with ethnic Korean businessmen serving as sponsors.
That was the era in which Rikidozan, himself a Korean national, sparked a wrestling boom in Japan, then desperate for local heroes after its defeat in war, by staging bouts in which Japanese usually defeated their much larger American opponents.
Rikidozan concealed his Korean roots and became very wealthy as well as a hero to the Japanese. Ko wrestled under the name of Daidosan after the river that flows through Pyongyang.
However, his wrestling group never took off, and Ko disbanded it soon after.
In 1961, the family boarded a ship in Niigata bound for North Korea under