Kim Man-il

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Kim Man-il
김만일
Born
Alexander Irsenovich Kim

c. 1944
Kim Jong-suk
FamilyKim family

Kim Man-il (

Kim Jong-suk. He was the younger brother of Kim Jong Il
, the second leader of North Korea.

Biography

Soviet records show that he was born Alexander Irsenovich Kim in 1944 in the village of Vyatskoye, Khabarovsk Krai, Soviet Union. Inside his family, he went by the Russian diminutive nickname for "Alexander": Shura (Russian: Шура).[citation needed]

Official North Korean biographies state that he and his older brother Kim Jong Il got along very well and played together.[1]

Death

There are conflicting accounts of Kim Man-il's death. North Korean sources claim that in the summer of 1947 or 1948, he accidentally drowned while playing with his brother in a pond in Pyongyang.[2] However, Russian sources indicate that he fell in a well in Vyatskoye and drowned, prior to the family moving back to Korea.[3] Two North Korean defectors have alleged that the young Kim Jong Il was responsible. When the brothers were playing in the pond near the edge in chest-high water, Kim Jong Il raised his face above the water faster than Shura and pushed his younger brother's head back into the water while laughing, eventually drowning him in the process.[4]

Official North Korean records state that, after Kim Man-il's death, Kim Jong Il was devastated and never got over the trauma. A grave allegedly belonging to Kim Man-il is located in Vyatskoye.

Kim Jong-suk
died while giving birth to a stillborn girl.


Notes

  1. ^ Russian: Александр Ирсенович Ким

References

  1. doi:10.1002/aps.167. and Robert Davison who publishes The Inquisitor cite North Korean defector Yi Ki-bong (이기봉, 李基奉) for statements that shed some doubt on this. Davison quotes from Yi's book, What Kind of Man is Kim Jong II [sic: Kim, Chŏng-il] (most likely Yi's chapter in 민족사 입장 에서 본 김 일성 정권): “Kim was very mischievous when a child. When he saw an insect, he trampled on it. After Korea’s liberation from Japanese occupation, the Kim II-sung family lived in a house in Mansu-tong, Central District, P’yongyang. In the early summer of 1948, his younger brother, Shura (then three years old) drowned. Kim Jong II was there at the time. I learned later how the accident occurred. The two brothers were playing in the pond right by the edge. Kim Jong II raised his face faster than his brother, and pushed his brother’s face back into water. He did that over and over.” Davison, Robert (26 August 2009). "Despot of the Week #5 – Kim Jong II". Archived
    from the original on 30 August 2009.
  2. . give a generic 1948.
  3. ^ Chung Byoung-sun (22 August 2002). "Sergeyevna Remembers Kim Jong Il". The Chosun Ilbo. Archived from the original on 24 November 2002.
  4. . Retrieved 6 June 2024.
  5. ^ "Digital Chosunilbo (English Edition) : Daily News in English About Korea". The Chosun Ilbo. Archived from the original on 24 November 2002. Retrieved 12 January 2022.