Death in a dynasty: What led to the demise of Kim Jong-nam?
AP-Image captionKim Jong-nam (seen on a monitor) grew up in secret, literally sealed behind palace gates---North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has remained tight-lipped on the latest murder claims
REUTERSImage caption--Kim Il-sung (left) with his son Kim Jong-il at a mass rally in Pyongyang in September 1983---Kim Jong Nam
By Michael Madden-14 February 2017
Kim Jong-nam was the eldest son of late North Korean leader Kim Jong-il and the elder half-brother of current leader Kim Jong-un.
Jong-nam was born in May 1971 in Pyongyang. His mother was North Korea's film actress Song Hye-rim. She was the daughter of South Korean communist intellectuals who migrated to the North during the Korean War.
She was four or five years older than Kim Jong-il and was still married to another man (with whom she had a child) when they began their romantic relationship.
By the conservative standards of North Korean society, this was a fairly sordid relationship, and for many years Kim Jong-il concealed his common law wife and new son from his father, Kim Il-sung.
At the time of Kim Jong-nam's birth, Kim Jong-il was the leading candidate to succeed his father, and details of his relationship with Ms Song, if they had become public, could have derailed his ambitions (particularly as his nearest political rival was his despised stepmother).
Because of the nature of the relationship, Kim Jong-nam was shuttered away in a large residence in central Pyongyang.
As his mother suffered from a variety of physical and mental infirmities requiring treatment outside North Korea, he lived with his maternal grandmother and his maternal aunt, Song Hye-rang.
The second Ms Song was an author and widow with two children of her own.
10-year odyssey
When Jong-nam was an infant, his aunt, Kim Kyong-hui, (Kim Jong-il's sister) tried to take the baby away and adopt him as her own child. She was overruled, but she would always support Jong-nam.
Instead, he grew up in secret, literally sealed behind palace gates.
Kim Jong-il doted on his son - co-sleeping with him, eating dinner and telephoning him when he was too busy to return home.
Despite rumours perpetuated by South Korean sources, Jong-nam did eventually meet and forge a relationship with grandfather Kim Il-sung.
In 1979, Jong-nam began a 10-year odyssey studying and living outside North Korea.
He stayed in Russia and Switzerland and eventually became fluent in French and English, returning to North Korea in the late 1980s.
His exposure to the outside world and his impatience living in relative social isolation in Pyongyang and Wonsan led him to question North Korea's political and economic system.
At several points, Kim Jong-il became so frustrated with Jong-nam that he threatened to send the young man to a political prison camp to work in a coal mine.
According to his aunt, the threat of imprisonment was so real that the family took measures to buy adequate clothing and shoes for the day when they would be sent away.
'Party boy'
Instead of being incarcerated, Jong-nam spent his 20s contending with his father's demands and unrealistic expectations.
Jong-nam would never be a viable candidate as his father's successor, but he still joined the family business. He would be linked to North Korea's internal security apparatus and its foreign exchange-earning operations outside the country.
During the Arduous March of the 1990s, as thousands of North Korean citizens starved to death, Jong-nam participated in audits in which central party officials reviewed the finances and business practices of state-owned factories.
After some of these audits, Jong-nam would witness the public executions of factory managers accused of stealing from the state.
All of this would be enough to disillusion Jong-nam about the country in which he was born and the political system his father and grandfather led.
He married in the late 1990s and fathered several children. From the early 2000s onward, Jong-nam would begin to reside outside the DPRK, living at the Kim family's houses in Macau and a separate residence in Beijing.
He would be tasked with managing some of the family's financial accounts (which total billions of dollars). He also would be involved in some of North Korea's illicit business operations.
While Jong-nam was never directly involved in such activities as narcotics trafficking or arms smuggling, he did have an active role in seeing that some of the monies from both legitimate and illicit activities avoided the scrutiny of legal authorities.
It was no accident that Jong-nam frequented casinos throughout Asia and maintaining some of these financial interests led to a jet-set lifestyle and cemented his reputation as something of a "party boy".
Family rivalries
Rewind back to 1979, when Jong-nam went overseas.
Kim Jong-il got drunk as Jong-nam departed the country and tearfully reproached Song Hye-rang: "You... you are doing this. You are taking my boy away from me."
By the late 1970s, Kim Jong-il had begun a relationship with a dancer in the prestigious Mansudae Art Troupe, an ethnic Korean repatriated from Japan named Ko Yong-hui.
With his son out of the country, Kim Jong-il set up a household with Ko and fathered three children with her, the middle one being the current leader Kim Jong-un.
In contrast to his other wives and common law partners, Ko actually took an interest in Pyongyang's palace politics and, what is more, Kim Jong-il fell passionately in love with her.
Jong-nam would later tell an outsider that - once he had left North Korea to study - his father used his relationship with Ko and their children to fill the void left by Jong-nam.
