In the last few years, there has been a notable shift in the state propaganda coming out of North Korea. A young girl — maybe 13 or so — has become a fixture at most major state events. Before an intercontinental ballistic missile launch, she can be seen side by side with her father, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, inspecting that missile. At some of the country’s massive military parades or at gatherings of world leaders, she receives salutes and bows from North Korean generals and government officials.
The girl’s name is believed to be Kim Ju Ae. The world learned of her existence thanks to five-time NBA champion Dennis Rodman, who was introduced to her during a visit to North Korea more than a decade ago.
Before Kim Ju Ae, the inner workings of North Korea’s ruling family were mostly kept secret. In fact, before Kim Jong Un was chosen to succeed his father, he was kept almost entirely hidden from the public eye. So this sudden spotlight on his daughter, paired with years-old rumors about Kim Jong Un’s health, sparked a massive debate among intelligence communities and North Korea watchers. Is Kim Jong Un just a proud dad showing off his favorite kid? Or is he doing something much bigger — like grooming a teenage girl to eventually take over as supreme leader of a country of 26 million people?
It’s a big question. And it would be a massive cultural change for North Korea’s patriarchal, old-school society, where women are hardly ever in charge. To help explain some of what’s going on in the “hermit kingdom,” the Today, Explained podcast spoke with independent journalist and author Anna Fifield.
Fifield is a former Beijing and Tokyo bureau chief for the Washington Post. She’s also written one of the definitive books on Kim Jong Un’s rise to power — The Great Successor: The Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong Un. She talks with Today, Explained co-host Noel King to unpack the intelligence black hole surrounding Pyongyang, how Jong Un may be attempting to rewrite the rules of succession, and whether the North Korean elite would ever actually line up behind a teenage girl.
Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.
Anna, there is a girl who we’ve seen in photos alongside Kim Jong Un. This girl is his daughter. What do we know about her and why is her presence at his side getting so much attention?
There’s a lot we don’t know about her, but what we think we know is that her name is Kim Ju Ae and that she is about 13 years old, and we have a very unusual source for this information, which is Dennis Rodman.
When Kim Jong Un was in the beginning of his reign, there was an effort by some Americans to reach out to him and see if they could get in contact, find out a little more about this guy. And everybody knew that Kim Jong Un loved the Chicago Bulls. So first of all, a request was made to Michael Jordan. He was not interested in going to North Korea for some reason. But Dennis Rodman was up for going to North Korea. And that started this weird period of basketball diplomacy when the United States’s main envoy to North Korea was a washed-out basketball star. And when the basketballer went to North Korea about 12 years ago and met Kim Jong Un, he held this baby. And so he was told at the time that the baby was about 1 year old and her name was Kim Ju Ae.
The North Koreans have never named her in state media or anywhere, so that’s the name we are going with until they tell us otherwise. But the reason she’s gathered so much attention over the past couple of years is that she has emerged at her father’s side repeatedly, and in the most unusual circumstances. She has been going to intercontinental missile launches. She’s been out with her father on a bunch of occasions, often wearing similar outfits like a leather bomber jacket that he was wearing when they drove a tank together. Very unusual daddy-daughter outings for a 13-year-old.
“It’s very unusual to take your 11-year-old to a missile launch.”
This, of course, has stoked a lot of speculation that she is his heir apparent and that he wants her to take over the family business, which is running a totalitarian regime.
Kim Jong Un took over from his father, and you and others have written about how he was kind of kept hidden before he was announced as the next leader of North Korea. Why do you think Kim Jong Un is being so public with his own kid, given that the way he came up was different?
Kim Jong Un is the third-generation leader of North Korea. They’ve only had a transition twice before, so there’s really no set way of doing this. But with Kim Jong Un’s father, he spent 20, 30 years being promoted through the ranks and appearing in public as a full-grown man to get this sense of legitimacy, the idea that he was the next leader of North Korea.
With Kim Jong Un, it was extremely rushed. His father had a stroke in 2008 and died at the end of 2011. Kim Jong Un was unveiled to the public in 2009, and then had this extremely fast debut period where he was very, very quickly promoted through the ranks, made a general, given political office in the Workers’ Party of Korea, the ruling party. It seemed to be quite hairy for a while there — it wasn’t clear that he was going to be able to win the support of these octogenarian apparatchiks who’d been there for decades, running the system.
I can only deduce from this now that Kim Jong Un wants to make sure that his heir doesn’t go through the same very rushed, difficult process. Kim Jong Un is still in his mid-40s; he doesn’t look particularly healthy, but it’s not likely that he’s about to hand over leadership anytime soon. But I think he’s probably laying the groundwork for in 30 or 40 years for his daughter to take over because it would be an extremely difficult thing for this dynastic, communist monarchy to go move to a fourth generation, but even more so for a woman to take over in a society that is extremely patriarchal.
When did her appearances start? When did people start saying, it looks like this man wants his daughter to take over?
It was almost three years ago that Kim Ju Ae started appearing in public. And at the beginning there was quite a lot of skepticism or talk about what she was doing there, why he was bringing her out to all these missile launches. And I think that’s partly because it’s very unusual to take your 11-year-old to a missile launch. But also because it just seemed completely beyond the pale that he would try to promote a young girl as the leader of North Korea.
But as she has taken on more and more appearances as she’s growing up in the public eye — she’s been called the beloved daughter in the state propaganda in North Korea — it has seemed more likely that he is grooming her and preparing the one percent in Pyongyang who keep him in power for the idea that she will one day take over.
It’s gone from being quite unlikely to seeming increasingly inevitable that he will try, at least, to have her takeover.
Does he have other children?
Again, another thing we don’t know.
Wow.
I mean, the South Korean intelligence service didn’t even know how to spell Kim Jong Un’s name until the North Koreans revealed it in the state propaganda. There is no human intelligence on North Korea, so there is so much we don’t know.
These pictures, I assume, because so much that comes out of North Korea is preapproved. I assume that these pictures have been sort of sent through the state media apparatus, which means, uh, they have some control over how this girl is perceived. What do the pictures tell us about the story the regime wants to tell?
It’s really striking. She looks so much like her mother. Her mother, Ri Sol Ju, was a very famous singer in North Korea and a household name, so everybody would recognize. And her mother took on an unusual role in North Korea as well.
She was there kind of as the Kate Middleton of North Korea. She’s there to modernize and show the friendly face of this monarchy and that the daughter Kim Ju Ae is carrying that on in many ways, because she looks so much like her mother. She wears her hair in the same way, she’s often dressed in these smart little skirt suits.
I think that the idea that they’re conveying here, between the leather bomber jackets with her dad and the stylish look of her mother, is that she is the next modern generation of a modernizing, changing North Korea.
Given that North Korea is a patriarchal society and that sexism exists everywhere in the world, and that this girl is very young, how confident are you that if something happens to Kim Jong Un, North Korea’s military and elites would actually rally behind this kid?
It depends on when it happens. I should say, I didn’t think Kim Jong Un could do it. I didn’t think that the old guard would accept this 20-something who had grown up playing basketball in Switzerland and had no political or military experience to be the next leader of the regime. But through his very brutal rule and his propensity to execute his naysayers, Kim Jong Un has managed to do it.
So I’d never say never, in terms of whether Kim Ju Ae could take over, but I do think it’s extremely, extremely difficult, partly because this regime is extremely anachronistic.
It should have probably collapsed decades ago with the demise of the Soviet Union and the death of its founder, but somehow it has managed to endure through this mixture of corruption, kleptocracy and fear keeping the ordinary people — plus the old guard who run the country — living in constant fear of being purged or worse.
It’s not impossible that the daughter would be able to work something out to take over. But I am, again, skeptical. In a very patriarchal, very Confucian society that values maleness and age, it just seems like a step too far.
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