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 Jong-il
In an August 2008 issue of the Japanese newsweekly "Shūkan Gendai", Waseda University professor Toshimitsu Shigemura, an authority on the Korean Peninsula, claimed that Kim Jong-il died of diabetes in late 2003 and had been replaced in public appearances by one or more stand-ins previously employed to protect him from assassination attempts. In a subsequent best-selling book, "The True Character of Kim Jong-il", Shigemura cited apparently unnamed people close to Kim's family along with Japanese and South Korean intelligence sources, claiming they confirmed Kim's diabetes took a turn for the worse early in 2000 and from then until his supposed death three and a half years later he was using a wheelchair. Shigemura moreover claimed a voiceprint analysis of Kim speaking in 2004 did not match a known earlier recording. It was also noted that Kim Jong-il did not appear in public for the Olympic torch relay in Pyongyang on 28 April 2008. The question had reportedly "baffled foreign intelligence agencies for years".