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
‘TERRORIST ATTACK’: The convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri resulted in the ‘martyrdom of five of our armed forces,’ the Presidential Leadership Council said A blast targeting the convoy of a Saudi Arabian-backed armed group killed five in Yemen’s southern city of Aden and injured the commander of the government-allied unit, officials said on Wednesday. “The treacherous terrorist attack targeting the convoy of Brigadier General Hamdi Shukri, commander of the Second Giants Brigade, resulted in the martyrdom of five of our armed forces heroes and the injury of three others,” Yemen’s Saudi Arabia-backed Presidential Leadership Council said in a statement published by Yemeni news agency Saba. A security source told reporters that a car bomb on the side of the road in the Ja’awla area in
PRECARIOUS RELATIONS: Commentators in Saudi Arabia accuse the UAE of growing too bold, backing forces at odds with Saudi interests in various conflicts A Saudi Arabian media campaign targeting the United Arab Emirates (UAE) has deepened the Gulf’s worst row in years, stoking fears of a damaging fall-out in the financial heart of the Middle East. Fiery accusations of rights abuses and betrayal have circulated for weeks in state-run and social media after a brief conflict in Yemen, where Saudi airstrikes quelled an offensive by UAE-backed separatists. The United Arab Emirates is “investing in chaos and supporting secessionists” from Libya to Yemen and the Horn of Africa, Saudi Arabia’s al-Ekhbariya TV charged in a report this week. Such invective has been unheard of
‘SHOCK TACTIC’: The dismissal of Yang mirrors past cases such as Jang Song-thaek, Kim’s uncle, who was executed after being accused of plotting to overthrow his nephew North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has fired his vice premier, compared him to a goat and railed against “incompetent” officials, state media reported yesterday, in a rare and very public broadside against apparatchiks at the opening of a critical factory. Vice Premier Yang Sung-ho was sacked “on the spot,” the state-run Korean Central News Agency said, in a speech in which Kim attacked “irresponsible, rude and incompetent leading officials.” “Please, comrade vice premier, resign by yourself when you can do it on your own before it is too late,” Kim reportedly said. “He is ineligible for an important duty. Put simply, it was
US President Donald Trump on Saturday warned Canada that if it concludes a trade deal with China, he would impose a 100 percent tariff on all goods coming over the border. Relations between the US and its northern neighbor have been rocky since Trump returned to the White House a year ago, with spats over trade and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney decrying a “rupture” in the US-led global order. During a visit to Beijing earlier this month, Carney hailed a “new strategic partnership” with China that resulted in a “preliminary, but landmark trade agreement” to reduce tariffs — but
RSS