Kim Man-il

Kim Man-il (1944–1947/1948) was the second son of the North Korean founding leader Kim Il Sung and his first wife Kim Jong-suk.

He was the younger brother of Kim Jong Il, the second leader of North Korea.

Soviet records show that he was born Alexander Irsenovich Kim (Александр Ирсенович Ким) in 1944 in the village of Vyatskoye, Khabarovsk Krai, Soviet Union.

Inside his family, he went by the Russian diminutive nickname for "Alexander": Shura (Шура).

Official North Korean biographies state that he and his older brother Kim Jong Il got along very well and played together.

There are conflicting accounts of Kim Man-il's death.

North Korean sources claim that in the summer of 1947 or 1948, he accidentally drowned while playing with his brother in a pond in Pyongyang.

However, Russian sources indicate that he fell in a well in Vyatskoye and drowned, prior to the family moving back to Korea.

Chinese sources indicate that the two brothers were playing in the pond near the edge in chest-high water.

Kim Jong Il raised his face above the water faster than Shura, and pushed his younger brother's head back into the water and held it underwater while laughing, yelling and swearing at him, eventually drowning him in the process.

Official North Korean records state that, after Kim Man-il's death, Kim Jong Il was devastated and never got over the trauma.

A grave allegedly belonging to Kim Man-il is located in Vyatskoye.

A year after his death, in 1949, his mother Kim Jong-suk died while giving birth to a stillborn girl.