Song Hye-rim (; 24 January 1937 18 May 2002) was a

North Korea North Korea, officially the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), is a country in East Asia. It constitutes the northern half of the Korean Peninsula and shares borders with China and Russia to the north, at the Yalu (Amnok) and T ...

n actress, best known for being the one-time favored mistress of Kim Jong-il.

Early life and education

Song was born in

Changnyeong Changnyeong County (''Changnyeong-gun'' 창녕군) is a county in South Gyeongsang Province, South Korea. In the early Three Kingdoms period, Changnyeong was the seat of Bihwa Gaya, a member of the Gaya confederacy which was later conquered by S ...

when Korea was under Imperial Japanese rule. She entered Pyongyang Movie College in 1955, but left the following year to give birth to a daughter. She later re-enrolled and graduated, having her film debut in 1960. She became a popular actress in the 1960s, appearing in movies including ''Onjŏngryŏng'' () and ''Baek Il-hong'' (). Most accounts of Song are drawn from the memoirs of her sister,

Song Hye-rang Seong Hye-rang (born 1935) is a North Korean defector and author. Early life Her father was a wealthy South Korean landowner who moved to the North for political reasons, while her mother was an editor of the official North Korean newspaper '' R ...

. Her former friend Kim Young-soon published her memoir ''I was Song Hye-rim's Friend'', and revealed that she and her family were sent to a concentration camp for ten years after she found out Hye-rim's secret, namely, that she was Kim Jong-il's mistress, a fact that was hidden at the time even from Kim Il-sung. This resulted in death of her parents and children, and her husband was taken away to never be seen again. She managed to defect to South Korea in 2003.

Personal life

Song began dating Kim Jong-il in 1968, after divorcing her first husband; she is believed to have been his first mistress.The birth of her son is said to have been kept secret from

Kim Il-sung Kim Il-sung (; , ; born Kim Song-ju, ; 15 April 1912 – 8 July 1994) was a North Korean politician and the founder of North Korea, which he ruled from the country's establishment in 1948 until his death in 1994. He held the posts of ...

until 1975.

Defection and death

Starting in the early 1980s, Song travelled to Moscow frequently for medical care. In 1996, Song was reported to have defected to the West, but intelligence officials in South Korea denied the story. She is reported to have died on 18 May 2002. Some reports say she died in

Moscow Moscow ( , US chiefly ; rus, links=no, Москва, r=Moskva, p=mɐskˈva, a=Москва.ogg) is the capital and largest city of Russia. The city stands on the Moskva River in Central Russia, with a population estimated at 13.0 millio ...

Notes

References

* * *

External links