SEOUL: Sister, adviser, and now top official: the newest promotion of Kim Yo Jong, sibling to North Korea’s leader, solidifies her position in Pyongyang’s circles of power, analysts say She has long been among Kim Jong Un’s closest lieutenants and one among the foremost influential women within the isolated regime, and on Thursday it had been made official when state media announced she had been named to the State Affairs Commission (SAC), the country’s top government body.
It is a serious intensify from her relatively junior position as a vice department director within the ruling party, and is probably going to heighten speculation that she might be a long-shot candidate to succeed her brother — whose health may be a regular topic of rumour — within the event of his demise Such a transition would give the socially conservative North its first female leader, but analysts caution it might defy convention.
“Kim Jong Un has raised Kim Yo Jong’s status,” said Shin Beom-chul, a researcher at the Korea Research Institute for National Strategy Born in 1988, consistent with Seoul’s Ministry of Unification, Yo Jong is one among three children born to Kim’s predecessor Kim Jong Il and his third known partner, former dancer Ko Yong Hui.
She was educated in Switzerland alongside her brother and rose rapidly up the ranks once he inherited power after their father’s death in 2011.
Her existence was barely known to the broader world until his funeral, when she was seen on state television standing right behind Kim Jong Un, looking tearful and ashen-faced In contrast an inscrutable smile played on her lips when she rode down an escalator at Incheon airport as her brother’s envoy to the 2018 Winter Olympic Games , becoming the primary member of the North’s ruling dynasty to line foot within the South since the Korean War Every detail of her visit was closely watched, from the garments she wore to the bag she was carrying and even her handwriting In keeping with the secrecy shrouding North Korea’s leaders, it’s not known whether she is married.
More recently she has often been seen at her brother’s side, including at his summits with the South’s leader Moon Jae-in then US president Donald Trump: on their 60-hour train journey to Hanoi for a gathering which then collapsed, she was seen bringing Kim an ashtray when he stepped off for a cigarette break She has also regularly issued statements in her own name making vitriolic denunciations of Washington or Seoul, particularly before the North berating a liaison office on its side of the border last year that the South had built and purchased There was “no doubt” that Kim Jong Un has an exceptionally close relationship together with his sister, said Yang Moo-jin of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
“Jong Un and Yo Jong spent much of their lonely childhood overseas together — i feel this is often once they developed something that’s almost like comradeship, on top of sibling love,” he told AFP Leadership has always been a family affair within the North and aside from her brother, Kim Yo Jong is now the highest-ranked member of the “Paektu bloodline” — a Northern term for the siblings’ grandfather Kim Il Sung and his descendants, who have led the nuclear-armed country since its foundation When Kim Jong Un disappeared from public view for several weeks last year it triggered feverish speculation over his health and who might succeed him.
Analysts say Kim Yo Jong’s portrayals in state media might be intended to bolster her credibility with the North Korean military and other hawks But when the official Rodong Sinmun newspaper carried portraits of the eight new SAC appointees on Thursday, she stood out among them both because the only woman and for her youth.
Given North Korea’s social and political structures, said Park Won-gon, a professor of North Korean studies at Ewha Womans University, it might be “very difficult” for Kim to designate his sister as his successor, “even though she may be a member of the Paektu bloodline”.
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