Kim Jong-suk
Kim Jong-suk married Kim Il Sung in the Soviet Union, most likely in 1941. On February 16, 1941 (or 1942, sources vary), in the Soviet village of Vyatskoye, Kim Jong-suk gave birth to Kim Jong-il, who was given the Russian name "Yuri Irsenovich Kim," and the nickname "Yura." In 1944, Kim Jong-suk gave birth to a second son, Kim Man-il in Korean and "Alexander" or "Shura" in Russian. In 1946, she gave birth to daughter, Kim Kyŏng-hŭi. Augustina Vardugina, a woman from Vyatskoye, was in her teens when Kim Il-sung’s guerrilla group camped there. She remembers Kim Jong-suk, and how she would come to the village to barter military rations for chicken and eggs. Her son, Kim Jong-il, would be holding her hand.
Kim Dong-in
Kim Dong-in, born on October 2, 1900 in Pyeongyang, Pyeongannam-do was a pioneer of realism and naturalism in Modern Korean literature. A son of a wealthy landowner, like many other young Korean intellectuals Kim took his higher education in Japan, attending the Meiji Academy in Tokyo and entering the Kawabata School of Fine Arts. Kim dropped out when he decided to pursue writing as a career. In 1919, Kim and other advocates for "art-for-art's-sake-literature," launched the influential but transitory journal "Creation" (Changjo) in Japan along with Joo Yohan, Jeon Yeongtaek, Choi Seungman, and Kim Hwan. "Creation" took a stand against the didactic literature ("national literature" to put it another way) proposed by Yi Kwang-su, In "Creation" Kim published his debut story, “The Sorrows of the Weak” (Yakhanjaui seulpeum). In 1925, Kim published one of his most famous works, "Potato," which was a breakthrough in Korean "realist" fiction and a further salvo in his ongoing literary war with Yi Kwang-su.