Little can be said with any degree of certainty about North Korea: what for instance, does one make of visuals doing the rounds since Tuesday of the country’s leader Kim Jong-un, seated on a tank turret with his 13-year-old daughter in the driver’s seat?
The New York Times headlined the story as Kim Jon-un’s Daughter Drives a Tank, and Succession Talk Accelerates.
It quoted a South Korean MP on the intelligence committee as saying that the video “was an intent to highlight Ju-ae’s military exceptionality” and also “dilute skepticism of a female heir.”
Her father has said nothing about her succeeding him, which anyway is laughable given that he is around 42 years old and although distinctly overweight, should remain in the saddle for many years.
A suggestion is she is being portrayed as the “potential” 4th-generation of her family who will go on to inherit the throne after her father.
Whether this is cast in stone is not clear since Kim, according to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS), has two other children: a first-born son reportedly born in 2010, daughter Kim Ju-ae born in 2013 and a third child born in 2017, whose gender remains unknown.
But nobody has seen the other two children, nor has Kim Jong-un ever talked about them in public. And it’s highly unlikely anybody would have asked him, went an article in the DailyNK.com published in June 2023, which follows the North Korean “royal family” closely.
But there is a complication over female successors. In Korean society surnames are inherited through the paternal line. If Kim Ju-ae succeeds her father, her offspring or the potential fifth-generation heir would not carry the “Kim” family name.
To a country that has known only the Kims, it’s not clear what impact a “non-Kim” could have on the ruling Workers Party, the military and so many organs that form the backbone of support.
A more definitive signal would have been her appointment to an official role in the ruling party at the 9th party congress held only two months ago.
That was when Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong was promoted as full department level director while Kim Ju-ae appeared only in the closing military parade. Perhaps Ju-ae is being publicised to soften Kim Jong Un’s image.
Jenny Town, senior fellow at the Stimson Center and Director of 38 North, has argued that Kim Ju-ae “reinforces the kind of public image Kim Jong Un has been trying to cultivate in North Korean political propaganda- as a family man and father – and her presence at an increasing number of events suggests that Kim Jong Un feels confident in his leadership position and, of course, her safety”.
Historically, potential successors are typically kept hidden from the public eye until they are older, as fears of premature ouster by the successor are always legible. For now, the best course seems to await either Kim Ju-ae’s formal elevation to an official position as heir or the possible revelation of Kim Jong Un’s first-born, if indeed one exists.
Not to forget, Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un’s sister, currently director of the general affairs department of the ruling Workers Party of Korea. She could also be a successor to Kim or perhaps even a regent who could keep the throne safe till the anointed heir comes of age.
