Kim Jong-un has two brothers and two sisters as far as is known. The private life of his father, Kim Jong-il, isn’t very well known due to the very restricted media access to the lives of leaders in North Korea and the difficulty of establishing the truth of any story. However, it seems sure that he was once legally married and had relationships with three other women, and his known children are the product of different relationships.

As a young man, around 1970 Kim Jong-il became involved with a well known film actress called Song Hye-rim. She was already married with one child, but seems to have divorced her husband – it is said that this happened under pressure from Kim Jong-il or his family but this is not known. In 1971 they had a son, Kim Jong-nam, but he was never acknowledged in public until 1994, when he was already grown up. At that time Kim Jong-il’s father, Kim Il-Sung, the founder of the North Korean republic, died and Kim Jong-il became the leader. Then he made his son’s existence publicly known.

By this time he already had several children. In the 1970s Kim Jong-il was officially married to Kim Young-sook. She was a member of an important military family and the marriage was arranged by Kim il-Sung for his son for political reasons. They had one daughter in 1974, called Kim Sul-song, but in later years they didn’t live together.
After his marriage Kim Jong-il formed a relationship with another woman, a dancer of partly Japanese origin, called Ko Young-hee. In later years the relationship was publicly known and in many ways Ko Yuong-hee was regarded as his wife, especially after he became leader in 1994. During the years of their relationship they had three children. Their first son was Kim Jong-chul, born in 1981, and their second was the present day leader of the country, Kim Jong-un, who was born in 1983 (all dates of birth are approximate, as official dates for the births of Kim Jong-il’s children have never been issued). Finally they had a daughter called Kim Yo-jong, whose exact age is not known but who should now be about 24-25 years old. Ko Young-hee died in 2004.

Kim Jong-il did live with another woman after her death – his former secretary, Kim OK – and as with Ko Young-hee she was generally regarded as his wife and was often seen with him in public. They are not known to have had any children.

When Kim Jong-il grew older it was at first assumed that his eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, (who now has three children of his own) would become the leader. This would be according to national and cultural tradition, and was also what had happened in Kim Jong-il’s own case. However, in the end he named his third and youngest son, Kim Jong-un, as his successor.
There has been a lot of speculation about why this happened. A likely answer is that Kim Jong-nam’s father had intended to pass the leadership to him, but there was incident in 2001 where he seems to have been trying to get away from the country. He was caught at an airport in Japan trying to use a fake passport, and it is also said that having lived and studied in Europe when younger, he could have become susceptible to foreign influences – the North Korean regime is notoriously suspicious of all outside influences.

The present leader, Kim Jong-un, has one child, a daughter, by his wife Ri-Sol-ju. He has been the supreme leader of the country since 2011.