Last year when Kim Jong Un stepped out of his private armoured train in Beijing and greeted the Chinese officials who were there to welcome him, a young girl was spotted standing behind the North Korean leader.
Dressed in black with her hair tied back, Kim Ju Ae, Kim’s daughter, was making her first international public appearance, giving credence to growing speculation at the time that she is the reclusive dictator’s heir apparent.
Now South Korea’s spy agency has gone one step further, telling a closed-door parliamentary briefing that Kim Ju Ae is now her father’s “successor-designate” rather than just being groomed for leadership. Lawmakers were told that Kim has begun actively consulting her on policy decisions, and cited her growing presence at major events.
The North Korean leader first revealed his daughter to the world in 2022, holding her hand while they observed the launching of a ballistic missile. Since then, her tally of appearances in North Korea’s state media has steadily grown, turning her from a quiet child at her father’s side into a familiar face at major national moments.
State-run media in North Korea – which don’t typically name her – now frequently describe Kim Ju Ae as “beloved” or “respected” or “great person of guidance”
South Korean intelligence officials believe that Kim Ju Ae is about 13 years old, and possibly one of at least two or three children. She is the only one regularly shown in public, often appearing to take on a role at Kim’s side that once belonged to her mother, Ri Sol Ju.
Former NBA star Dennis Rodman was the first to publicly reveal the existence of Kim Jong Un’s daughter after a 2013 visit to Pyongyang, where he said he met the child and Kim’s wife.
He told The Guardian at the time: “I held their baby Ju Ae and spoke with (Kim’s wife) as well.”
After her 2022 public debut, Kim Ju Ae was seen at several major military events in 2023. Analysts viewed these appearances as a signal that North Korea would continue prioritising its nuclear arsenal and that the Kim family intended to stay firmly tied to the country’s military might.
“By ostentatiously including his wife and daughter, Kim wants observers at home and abroad to see his family dynasty and the North Korean military as irrevocably linked,” Leif-Eric Easley, a professor at Ewha University in Seoul, told CNN after the 2023 parade.
Experts also suggest that Kim Ju Ae’s public appearances may be designed to portray Kim Jong Un as a devoted father, enhancing his image domestically and abroad. In a rare public display of fatherly affection, Kim Jong Un and his daughter Ju Ae were seen kissing on the cheek during a New Year’s Eve celebration in a packed Pyongyang stadium in 2024.
An analysis of state-owned media photographs, released by the authorities, signals her rise. In September 2023, in a photo released by the authorities, she is seen sitting beside her father on a VIP platform during a military parade celebrating the country’s founding as a republic. Pak Jong Chon, a senior military officer and Kim Jong Un’s deputy on the Central Military Commission of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, was seen kneeling respectfully beside her, speaking quietly into her ear.
A November 2023 state media photo placed her at the forefront, with her father in the background – a move analysts say would not have happened without Kim Jong Un’s approval.
When she made her second public appearance in November 2023, “the photograph of Kim Ju Ae standing alongside her father while being celebrated by technicians and scientists involved in the latest ICBM launch would support the idea that this is the start of her being positioned as a potential successor,” Ankit Panda, an expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace said at the time.
“State media underscoring her father’s love for her further underscores this, I think. Finally, both of her initial public appearances have been in the context of strategic nuclear weapons – the crown jewels of North Korea’s national defence capabilities. That doesn’t strike me as coincidental,” Panda told Associated Press.
In early 2024, she became more visible in military settings and joined her father to inspect key domestic projects, such as the Gangdong Greenhouse agricultural complex.
By mid-2024, she was being introduced at state ceremonies by Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister Kim Yo Jong, and by October, she was positioned to formally greet the Russian ambassador.
“For all we know this is just him doting on a favourite child, but the more that she shows up, the more it seems that she’s either being fully groomed for leadership or at least floated as a possibility,” Mason Richey, a professor at Hankuk University of Foreign Studies in Seoul, told Reuters last year.
This year, Kim Ju Ae joined her father in receiving foreign dignitaries and was highlighted ahead of Kim Jong Un’s senior aides in state media coverage of high-profile government events.
North Korea has also started releasing postage stamps featuring both Kim Jong Un and his daughter together.
If Kim is grooming Ju Ae as his successor, she could become the first woman to lead the reclusive dynasty and its nuclear arsenal, a prospect that was once considered unlikely by South Korean intelligence. That’s no longer the case.
South Korea said it was closely monitoring whether she appears with Kim before thousands of delegates at the upcoming Workers’ Party Congress, where Kim is expected to outline his major policy goals for the next five years and take steps to tighten his authoritarian grip.
“In North Korea, where officials and people are not ready to accept a female leader, Kim Jong Un is making his daughter’s successor status a fait accompli by repeatedly exposing her through state media,” Cheong Seong-chang, an analyst at the Sejong Institute in Seoul who has written books on Kim and his family, told the NYT.
Kim Ju Ae has also moved away from the ponytail she once wore, now styling her hair in a half-updo reminiscent of her mother, Ri Sol-ju, and often appears in a leather jacket, a wardrobe choice often deployed by her father.
Earlier, Cheong Seong-Chang, an analyst at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea, said that Kim Jong Un likely believes his daughter has the capacity and resolve to succeed him as leader.
“By accompanying her father on major events, it’s like she’s learning kingship and building a human network at a tender age,” Cheong said.
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