Kim Jong-un's exiled aunt breaks silence

DPRK'sleader Kim Jong-un's aunt has come out of hiding in the U.S. to speak about her famous nephew for the first time.

Ko Yong-suk spoke to the Washington Post for 20 hours in total, revealing she looked after Kim as a child in Switzerland before defecting to the U.S. with her husband.

Ko is the younger sister of Kim's mother Ko Yong-hui, who died of breast cancer in 2004.

When her sister became ill in 1998 and it became clear that their position in the DPRK'selite was threatened, Ko, her husband Ri Gang and their three children defected to the U.S.

They now run a dry-cleaning business in upstate New York under different names.

Ko recalls that Kim Jong-un was given a general's uniform decorated with stars on his eighth birthday and real generals with real stars bowed to him from that moment on.

"It was impossible for him to grow up as a normal person when the people around him were treating him like that," Ko said. She added, "He wasn't a troublemaker, but he was short-tempered and had a lack of tolerance. When his mother tried to tell him off for playing with these things too much and not studying enough, he wouldn't talk back, but he would protest in other ways, like going on a hunger strike."

Ko and her husband bought a two-story house using US$200,000 the CIA gave them on arrival in the U.S. but harbor dreams of getting back into Kim's good graces and returning to North Korea.

"I think we have achieved the American Dream," Ri told the newspaper. Two years ago they went to South Korea, "where Ko enjoyed visiting the palaces she had seen in TV dramas," according to the Washington Post. "They look like a normal family."

But Ri said his "ultimate goal is to go back to North Korea. I understand America and I understand North Korea, so I think I can be a negotiator between the two. If Kim Jong-un is how I remembered he used to be, I would be able to meet him and talk to him."

(THE CHOSUNLBO)