It Makes a Difference to the Sheep

KIM JONG IL'S WIFE IN CRITICAL CONDITION? (link courtesy of Seeing Eye Blog) I hadn't heard that she has been referred to as North Korea's "queen" before. More fuel for the North-Korea-really-is-a-traditional-Korean-dynasty-in-modern-garb theory.
UPDATE: The Marmot has more.
UPDATE: Free North Korea has still more (though some is more of the same):

Little is known about Ms Ko, other than that she is the daughter of parents who left Japan in the 1960s, lured by the promise of enjoying Mr Kim's socialist paradise.

Ms Ko reportedly caught Mr Kim's eye as one of 2,000 girls employed in the dictator's "pleasure groups". She was a dancer in the Mansudae Art Troupe in Pyongyang. Each "pleasure group" is composed of three teams - a "satisfaction team", which performs sexual services; a "happiness team," which provides massage and a "dancing and singing team".

These teams, recruited from girls' high schools, undergo a six-month training course before they are assigned to one of the dictator's 32 villas and palaces until the age of 25.

Reports filtering out early last month suggested that Ms Ko, had recently become obsessed about raising her profile into that of a national icon, on a similar footing to Kim Jong Il's revolutionary fighter mother. Before the accident she had begun styling herself the "Mother of Pyongyang" and insisted the state media broadcast propaganda about her.

According to a bodyguard to the regime who defected: "The National Security Department warns that anyone who criticises the 'Mother of Pyongyang' will be strictly punished as a political criminal."

There have been intriguing hints of a looming power struggle. One North Korea watcher in Seoul said: "To make her second son Jong-Woon the successor, Ms Ko has ordered the Workers Party and high officials to call Jong-Woon the 'Morning Star King'."

Yu Suk-Ryul at the Institute of Foreign Affairs and National Security think-tank in Seoul said yesterday that the North Korean dictator deliberately maintained a veil of secrecy around his dynasty.

"His royal families are hidden in a veil as a way of worshipping the Kim Jong Il family."