Daily NK: Kim Jong Il’s Niece Commits Suicide in Paris

After life in Paris, I suppose even a gilded life in Pyongyang would seem less worth living.

A niece of North Korean leader Kim Jong-il killed herself in Paris, probably because she did not want to return to her home in the reclusive state, Yonhap news agency reported on Friday.

Jang Keum-song, 29, died in Paris – where she was studying – because of what appeared to be an overdose of sleeping pills taken after drinking alcohol, Yonhap cited a source in Seoul with access to intelligence on North Korea as saying.

It said Jang’s body, which was found by her bodyguard, was subsequently sent back to Pyongyang.

I wonder why. What did she read? Who had she met?

Hat tips to my wife, and to James Chen.

Update: James Kim (see comment) points me to this story, suggesting that my second question turns out to have been a good guess. It’s a very sad thing, of course, although I’m not sure there’s anything uniquely North Korean about this. Korean society is just very rigid about marriage and social status. Many will remember the young, pretty, popular Samsung heiress who committed suicide recently. Her cause of death was initially reported as a car accident, but it later turned out that she’d killed herself because she was in love with a man her parents would not accept.

There are some differences, of course; North Korea has rearranged its classes around politics, and the consequences of lower class there may include starvation.