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Ko Young-hee. This image was captured from a video acquired by Japan’s Mainichi Daily News.

By Jung Nam-ku, Tokyo correspondent

Japan’s Mainichi Daily News reported on June 10 that it recently acquired video footage of Ko Young-hee, the mother of current North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, which is being shown to the country’s military officials.

The newspaper said Pyongyang appeared to have resumed its efforts to turn Ko (1953-2004) into a figure of worship.

In an article filed from Beijing, the Mainichi Daily Dews reported that North Korea had last month begun showing prominent People’s Army figures a 90-minute video titled “The Mother of the Great Songun Korea.” “Songun” is the name of North Korea’s official “military first” policy.

The video shows Ko watching the young Kim as he draws pictures, conducting pistol firing drills for his personal protection, and mending his field jacket, the newspaper reported.

The newspaper said the narrator did not mention Ko’s name or history, calling her only “the most precious revolutionary comrade of the dear General Kim Jong-il, the unparalleled master of Songun.”

The video described Ko as “sent from the heavens for our Songun homeland, Kim Il-sung, and the race,” the newspaper reported.

It also reportedly elevated Ko to the pantheon of “great mothers” of supreme leaders, following Kim Il-sung’s mother Kang Pan-sok and Kim Jong-il‘s mother Kim Chong-suk.

Ko, an ethnic Korean who went to North Korea from Japan in the early 1960s as part of a repatriation effort, was Kim Jong-il’s third wife and the mother of sons Jong-un and Jong-chol and daughter Yo-jong. She has never before appeared in any official reporting by the country.

The Mainichi Daily News said Pyongyang had previously begun efforts to deify Ko in 2002, principally through the People‘s Army of Korea, but discontinued them after her June 2004 death.

The newspaper also reported activities in 2008, including the development of songs venerating her by the Workers’ Party of Korea art division, but said these were canceled on orders from the party’s top leadership.

It speculated that the reason for the video’s distribution now was a determination by the country‘s leadership that the identity of Kim Jong-un’s biological mother could not be left unclear after his being named the country‘s top leader in April.

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