North Korea’s Kim Ju Ae Emerges as Likely Heir, Defectors and Analysts Say

SEOUL — Until she fled North Korea three years ago, Kim Yumi felt a deep frustration whenever state television showed leader Kim Jong Un alongside his young daughter. The message, she believed, was unmistakable: the regime was laying the groundwork for a hereditary transfer of power to Kim’s daughter.

Publicly questioning the Kim dynasty’s grip on power would mean severe persecution. Already angered by draconian pandemic regulations that destroyed her family’s fishing business, she defected to South Korea by boat with her family.

“My husband and I didn’t want our children to live under a fourth-generation dictatorship. As parents, we thought the best thing we could do for our children was to give them freedom,” said Kim Yumi, 32, who now lives in Seoul.

North Korea tolerates no dissent and harshly punishes attempts to flee. Established in 1948, the nation is nominally a socialist republic but functions as an authoritarian dynasty, with three generations of the Kim family ruling in succession. There was no known public resistance during the previous two transitions — 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.

This time, North Korea appears to be attempting something radical.

Kim Jong Un’s repeated public appearances with his daughter over the past four years have fueled speculation that she is being groomed as his heir. The question of who will lead North Korea next is critical, as that person will face the daunting task of governing an impoverished, nuclear-armed nation of 26 million people who have little political freedom, live under strict state surveillance, and are largely cut off from the outside world.

North Koreans have no say in selecting their future leader, and analysts and defectors say they will passively accept a third dynastic succession — at least publicly.

To gauge private sentiment, The Associated Press spoke with nearly a dozen defectors who maintain contacts inside North Korea or witnessed previous power transitions, as well as several experts.

Most defectors believe the girl is Kim’s heir

Little is known about Kim’s daughter beyond reports that she is about 13 years old and named Kim Ju Ae.

Since late 2022, she has made dozens of public appearances, all alongside her father at major events such as weapons tests and military parades. State media has referred to her as Kim’s “most beloved” and “respected” child. Her status has been underscored by images showing an elderly general kneeling before her and her standing prominently in front of her father.

South Korea’s intelligence agency assesses that she is Kim’s likely heir. Eight of the 11 defectors interviewed by the AP shared that view; the others disagreed, citing the North’s deeply 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 simply for a daughter of Kim Jong Un,” said Tae Yong-ho, a former minister at North Korea’s Embassy in London who defected to South Korea in 2016. “They are repeating the same protocol and treatment they provided for Kim Jong Un when he accompanied his father as heir.”

Kang Mi-jin, a defector who runs a company analyzing North Korea’s economy, said her contacts inside the North, reached via smuggled phones, believe Kim Ju Ae is in line to succeed her father.

Jung Gwang-il, a defector who specializes in smuggling outside information into North Korea, said North Koreans he meets during visits to Chinese border towns hold the same belief.

Former NBA star Dennis Rodman was the first to reveal her identity, holding her as a baby during a 2013 trip to Pyongyang.

Doubts remain about a woman becoming North Korea’s leader

Much of the skepticism surrounding Kim Ju Ae’s potential leadership stems from her gender. South Korean officials believe she has a younger sibling whose gender has not been confirmed.

Women remain deeply underrepresented in senior posts in North Korea. Only one of the 17 department directors for the ruling Workers’ Party is a woman — Kim Jong Un’s influential younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry.

“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.

Lee Si-young, a defector who heads the Seoul-based Free North Korea Radio station, said some of her older contacts in the North are unhappy with the prospect of a woman taking power. But she added that members of the Kim family “are like gods reigning over humans, so gender really doesn’t matter.”

Kim’s push for hereditary power transfer faces little resistance at home

Whether or not the girl succeeds her father, observers agree that Kim Jong Un, 42, is likely to designate one of his children to prolong his family’s rule — a move they expect would face little domestic resistance. South Korea’s spy agency recently assessed that Kim is extremely obese and at high risk of cardiovascular disease but shows no other signs of poor health.

North Koreans will passively “accept a hereditary succession as something that they should go along with,” said Ahn Chan-il, a defector and scholar who heads the World Institute for North Korean Studies in Seoul.

During North Korea’s first leadership transition in 1994, the new leader, Kim Jong Il, then 52, had already spent two decades as the official successor working alongside his father.

The second succession in 2011 was more uncertain. Kim Jong Un, then 27, was seen by outsiders as too young and inexperienced. He quickly consolidated power, however, by orchestrating high-profile executions and purges, including the 2013 killing of his powerful uncle, Jang Song Thaek.

“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.”

Choi Song-juk, who fled North Korea in 2015, said she had been so thoroughly indoctrinated that she had no complaints about the North’s two earlier power successions. She now calls them “nonsense.”

Defector Jeon Jae-hyun said North Korea’s pervasive surveillance apparatus keeps people from voicing discontent and helps enforce political loyalty.

Defector Kim Yumi said she had never heard about the girl until Kim Jong Un publicly introduced his daughter at a long-range missile launch site in November 2022.

“Ordinary people know absolutely nothing about the private lives of the Kim family,” said Kim Yumi, who now runs a YouTube channel on North Korea. “They don’t really try to know about it and don’t pay attention to it because doing so could put them in danger.”

Source link