South Korea’s spy agency yesterday said that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, who last week accompanied him on a high-profile visit to Beijing, is understood to be his recognized successor.
The teenager drew global attention when she made her first official overseas trip with her father, as he met with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin. Analysts have long seen her as Kim’s likely successor, although some have suggested she has an older brother who is being secretly groomed as the next leader.
The South Korean National Intelligence Service (NIS) “assesses that she [Kim Ju-ae] secured sufficient ‘revolutionary narrative’ needed to strengthen her position as a likely successor,” following her China trip, South Korean lawmaker Lee Seong-kweun told reporters after being briefed by the agency.
Photo: Korean Central News Agency via Reuters
“It was suggested that Kim Ju-ae’s status was solidified as a likely successor by showing her occasionally, while enabling her to build overseas experience, but not to appear at public events,” said Park Sun-won, another lawmaker on the parliament’s intelligence committee.
Her status was evident in state media photographs and a special documentary showing her accompanying Kim Jong-un in China, the agency said.
North Korean state media released a photo of her inside the country’s bulletproof train alongside her father and other officials as they returned from Beijing.
North Korean officials were spotted during the China trip wiping out traces to prevent the biological information of the leader and his daughter from being exposed.
That included staying together at the North Korean embassy in China, where items and even waste were “transported by special aircraft,” the NIS said.
“Strict protection of their leader’s biometric information has long been part of North Korea’s security protocol,” said Ahn Chan-il, a defector-turned-researcher who runs the World Institute for North Korea Studies. “The fact that Ju-ae received the same level of protection as Kim Jong-un once again demonstrates that she is a highly likely successor.”
Kim Ju-ae was publicly introduced to the world in 2022, when she accompanied her father to an intercontinental ballistic missile launch. North Korean state media have since referred to her as “the beloved child,” and a “great person of guidance” — “hyangdo” in Korean — a term typically reserved for top leaders and their successors.
Before 2022, the only confirmation of her existence had come from former US National Basketball Association star Dennis Rodman, who visited North Korea in 2013.
Seoul had initially indicated that Kim Jong-un and his wife, Ri Sol-ju, had their first child, a boy, in 2010, and that Kim Ju-ae was their second child.
In 2023, the then-South Korean minister of unification said that the government was “unable to confirm” the existence of Kim Jong-un’s son.
Lee said that rumors that Kim Jong-un has another child, including one with a disability or studying abroad, are “not considered credible.”
“In particular, in the case of studying abroad, the NIS noted that no matter how much one tries to conceal such a fact, it would inevitably become known, and thus the possibility is considered very low,” he added.
Additional reporting by Reuters
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