Kim Jong-un has been the supreme leader of North Korea since 2012, and now he has made an unconventional choice for his successor. Kim has reportedly selected his daughter, Kim Ju-ae, to be the next ruler of the hermit kingdom. Ju-ae is believed to be only in her early teenage years, which would make her one of the youngest world leaders — and also the first woman head of North Korea. But it may be a while before any official plans come to light.
Early life
Kim Ju-ae is thought to be around 13 or 14 years old, though her exact age is unknown. She is the “only known child of Kim Jong-un and his wife, Ri Sol-ju,” said BBC News; South Korean intelligence believes Kim may have an “older son, but this son has never been acknowledged nor shown on North Korean media.”
News of Ju-ae first emerged via an unlikely source: basketball star Dennis Rodman, who spoke of the girl during a 2013 trip to North Korea (Kim is known to be an ardent basketball fan). “I held their baby Ju-ae,” Rodman said to The Guardian, inadvertently revealing her existence to the world. Ju-ae made her first appearance on North Korean state TV in 2022, when she was “shown inspecting North Korea’s latest intercontinental ballistic missile while holding her father’s hand,” said BBC News.
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Kim’s successor
The National Intelligence Service (NIS), South Korea’s foreign intelligence agency, believes Kim has long been angling for Ju-ae to take over as supreme leader. But Kim appears to have taken this to the next level by “taking steps to consolidate his daughter's position as successor,” said Reuters, citing the NIS. There are also “signs she is providing input on policy matters.” There were reportedly also signs Ju-ae could be given an official title soon.
The NIS has previously “described Kim Ju-ae as being ‘in study as successor’ but today the expression used was that she ‘was in the stage of being internally appointed successor,’” Lee Seong-kweun, a South Korean lawmaker, said to Reuters. Ju-ae has been featured prominently in North Korean propaganda videos in recent years, and South Korea “believes the role she has taken on during public events indicates she has started to provide policy input and that she is being treated as the de facto second-highest leader.”
One of Ju-ae’s most notable public outings involved an appearance with her father at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun. The building is the mausoleum for former North Korean Supreme Leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il and symbolizes the “eternal sanctuary of the entire Korean nation,” according to North Korea’s Constitution. And Ju-ae’s first “public trip abroad came last September when she accompanied her father to Beijing to attend Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s military parade,” said CNN.
Even though Ju-ae is the “only Kim child with any visibility,” some experts “argue it’s just a PR stunt to attract international attention,” said CNN, and that she may not actually be Kim’s successor. Viewing Ju-ae as the next supreme leader “reflects a hasty judgment that overlooks the fundamental nature of North Korean power structures,” Hyunseung Lee, a North Korean defector and human rights activist, said at UPI. Her continued media exposure “represents a different packaging approach in North Korean propaganda,” and her “actions and position remain exactly what they are: the daughter of Kim Jong-un, nothing more and nothing less.”
