North Korean defectors interviewed by The Associated Press say they believe leader Kim Jong Un is preparing his daughter, Kim Ju Ae, to eventually take power, marking a potential third generation of hereditary rule in the isolated, nuclear-armed nation.
Kim Ju Ae, reportedly about 13 years old, has appeared publicly alongside her father dozens of times since late 2022, often at major events including weapons tests and military parades. State media has referred to her as Kim’s “most beloved” and “respected” child, and images have circulated showing a senior general kneeling before her.
South Korea’s spy agency has assessed that she is Kim’s likely heir. Of 11 defectors interviewed by the AP, eight agreed with that assessment, while three expressed doubt, pointing to North Korea’s strongly patriarchal culture.
“During her visits to missile launch sites and factories, the way senior North Korean officials treat Kim Ju Ae involves protocols reserved for a successor, not the ones simply for a daughter of Kim Jong Un,” said Tae Yongho, a former North Korean diplomat who defected to South Korea in 2016. He said officials are repeating the treatment once given to Kim Jong Un himself when he was being groomed as his father’s successor.
Kang Mi-Jin, a defector who runs a firm analyzing North Korea’s economy, said contacts she maintains inside the country via smuggled phones believe Kim Ju Ae is in line to succeed her father. Jung Gwang-il, who smuggles outside information into North Korea, said North Koreans he encounters near the Chinese border share that belief.
Former NBA star Dennis Rodman first revealed the girl’s identity publicly, photographed holding her as a baby during a 2013 trip to Pyongyang.
Skepticism Over a Female Successor
Some defectors doubt a woman would be allowed to lead North Korea, given the near-total absence of women from senior government posts. Only one of 17 department directors in the ruling Workers’ Party is a woman — Kim Jong Un’s influential sister, Kim Yo Jong, according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry. South Korean officials also believe Kim Jong Un has a younger child whose gender has not been confirmed.
“My contacts in North Korea say it would be nonsensical to revere that little girl as their supreme leader,” said Kim Jeong-Ah, a former North Korean army officer who resettled in South Korea in 2009.
But Lee Si-young, who heads the Seoul-based Free North Korea Radio station, said that while some older contacts inside the country are uneasy about a woman taking power, members of the Kim family occupy a different category entirely.
“They are like gods reigning over humans so gender really doesn’t matter.”
No Public Dissent Expected
North Korea, founded in 1948 and nominally a socialist republic, functions in practice as an authoritarian dynasty now in its third generation. There was no known public resistance during the two previous transfers of power — from state founder Kim Il Sung to his son Kim Jong Il in 1994, and from Kim Jong Il to his son Kim Jong Un in 2011.
Analysts and defectors expect the same muted public response this time, regardless of who is chosen. South Korea’s spy agency recently assessed that Kim Jong Un, 42, is extremely obese and at high risk of cardiovascular disease, though it found no other signs of serious illness.
“A hereditary power succession system has been institutionalized in North Korea, just like presidential elections in our system,” said Oh Gyeong-seob, an analyst at Seoul’s Korea Institute for National Unification. “North Korea’s ruling elite accepts it as a matter of course. So do its general citizens.”
Defector Ahn Chan-il, who heads the World Institute for North Korean Studies in Seoul, said North Koreans will passively “accept a hereditary succession as something that they should go along with.”
Defector Choi Song-juk, who fled in 2015, said she had once accepted the earlier successions without complaint due to years of state indoctrination, but now calls that history “nonsense.” Defector Jeon Jae-hyun said the country’s pervasive surveillance apparatus discourages ordinary citizens from voicing dissent and enforces political loyalty.
Kim Yumi, 32, who fled North Korea by boat with her family three years ago after pandemic restrictions devastated their fishing business, said she had never heard of Kim Ju Ae until the girl was introduced publicly at a missile launch site in November 2022.
“Ordinary people know absolutely nothing about private lives of the Kim family,” said Kim Yumi, who now runs a YouTube channel about North Korea from Seoul. “They don’t really try to know about it and don’t pay attention to it because doing so could put them in danger.”
She said she and her husband left in part so their children would not grow up under a fourth generation of Kim family rule.
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