Kim Man-il (; 1944–1947/1948) was the second son and child of

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 leader

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 ...

and his first wife,

Kim Jong-suk Kim Jong-suk (; 24 December 1917Suh Dae-sook. Kim Il Sung: The North Korean Leader. New York: Columbia University Press, 1988. – 22 September 1949) was a Korean anti-Japanese guerrilla, a Communist activist, North Korean leader Kim ...

Biography

Soviet records show that he was born Alexander Irsenovich Kim (russian: Александр Ирсенович Ким) in 1944 in the

Soviet Russia The Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic, Russian SFSR or RSFSR ( rus, Российская Советская Федеративная Социалистическая Республика, Rossíyskaya Sovétskaya Federatívnaya Soci ...

n village of Vyatskoye. Inside his family, he was nicknamed ''Shura''. Official North Korean biographies state that Shura and his older brother

Kim Jong-il Kim Jong-il (; ; ; born Yuri Irsenovich Kim;, 16 February 1941 – 17 December 2011) was a North Korean politician who was the second supreme leader of North Korea from 1994 to 2011. He led North Korea from the 1994 death of his father Ki ...

got along very well and played together. Kim Man-il's death is shrouded in mystery. North Korean sources claim that in the summer of 1947 or 1948, Shura and his brother were playing in a pond in the city of

Pyongyang Pyongyang (, , ) is the capital and largest city of North Korea, where it is known as the "Capital of the Revolution". Pyongyang is located on the Taedong River about upstream from its mouth on the Yellow Sea. According to the 2008 populat ...

, when Shura accidentally drowned. However, Russian sources indicate that he fell in a well in Vyatskoye and drowned, prior to the family moving back to Korea. Chinese sources indicate that the two brothers were playing in the pond near the edge in chest-high water. Kim Jong Il raised his face faster than Shura, and pushed his younger brother's head back into the water and held it underwater while laughing, yelling and swearing at him. Official North Korean records state that Kim Jong-il was devastated and could never get over the trauma of losing his younger brother. Kim Man-il's alleged grave is located in Vyatskoye. In 1949, his mother,

died while giving birth to a stillborn girl.

Notes and references

{{DEFAULTSORT:Kim, Man-il 1944 births 1940s deaths People from Khabarovsky District Koryo-saram Year of death uncertain Kim dynasty (North Korea) Deaths by drowning Children of national leaders 20th-century North Korean people Child deaths