Kim Man-il

Kim Man-il (Korean: 김만일; Hanja: 金萬一; born Alexander Kim; 1943–1946/1948) was the second son of the North Korean founding leader Kim Il Sung and his first wife 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 Kim in 1943 in the village of Vyatskoye, Khabarovsk Krai, Soviet Union. Inside his family, he went by a 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.[unreliable source?]

Death

There are conflicting accounts of Kim Man-il's death. North Korean sources claim that in the summer of 1946 or 1948, he accidentally drowned while playing with his brother in a pond in Pyongyang. However, Russian sources indicate that he fell in a well in Vyatskoye and drowned, prior to the family moving back to Korea. 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.

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. A year after his death, in 1949, his mother Kim Jong Suk died while giving birth to a stillborn girl.

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