Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s dictator, has an aunt that has secretly been living in the United States for almost 20 years.
Revealing herself to the Washington Post, Ko Yong Suk (the name she went by when she was part of North Korea’s royal family), said she and her husband have been incredibly lucky since they defected from North Korea in 1998 to the CIA in the United States.
“My kids went to great schools and they’re successful, and I have my husband, who can fix anything. There’s nothing we can envy,” she said. She and her husband run a dry-cleaning business and live anonymously in the country a few hours outside New York City. Occasionally, the CIA will visit and ask them to identify people in photographs, according to the Post.
Ko can provide insights into the personality of her nephew, now North Korea’s repressive leader. “He wasn’t a troublemaker but he was short-tempered and had a lack of tolerance,” Ko said.