Hong Il-chon
first wife of Kim Jong-il
Hong Il-chon (Korean: 홍일천; born 1942) is a North Korean educator. She was the first wife of Kim Jong Il. She was the daughter of a soldier who died during the Korean War. In the early 1960s, Kim Il Sung, father of Kim Jong Il, introduced her to his son and handpicked her to marry him in 1966. Her only child, daughter Kim Hye-kyung, was born in 1968, and is the first child of Kim Jong Il. They divorced in 1969.
Hong Il-chon held a degree in Russian Literature from Kim Il Sung University. After her divorce from Kim Jong Il, she was still active in politics and educational affairs. She became one of the members of the Supreme People's Assembly during the period between 1977 and 1991. After she withdrew from the Assembly, she was appointed as principal of Kim Hyong Jik University of Education in September 1991.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hong Il-chon” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.