Kim Jong Un Strengthens Daughter’s Role as Expected Heir, According to Seoul

Kim’s teenage daughter, Ju Ae, has increasingly been regarded as the likely successor, a belief reinforced by her recent series of prominent public appearances.

Following information from Seoul’s main intelligence agency, a South Korean lawmaker said Thursday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has confirmed his daughter as heir apparent ahead of a key party conference.

The Kim family has ruled North Korea with an iron grip for decades, and a cult of identity around their “Paektu bloodline” dominates daily life in the isolated country.

Kim’s teenage daughter, Ju Ae, has long been seen as next in line, a notion further fueled by several recent high-profile outings.

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said Ju Ae has now been “clearly chosen as the successor,” lawmaker Lee Seong-kwon said after a parliamentary briefing with the spy agency.

He told reporters that the assessment was made “after considering several circumstances—including her increased public presence at official events.”

South Korea’s spy agency said last year that Ju Ae appeared to be next in line, as she accompanied Kim on a high-profile trip to Beijing.

Photos published ahead of a rare political congress in North Korea this month further confirmed this belief.

In January, state media showed Ju Ae paying homage with her father at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where the bodies of the country’s founder, Kim Il Sung, and second-generation ruler, Kim Jong Il, are interred.

Pyongyang is scheduled to hold a key party congress in late February—its biggest political event—where it is expected to outline its foreign policy, war planning, and nuclear ambitions for the next five years.

The National Intelligence Service said it would closely monitor Ju Ae’s attendance and the level of protocol accorded to her.

Analysts have said she could be elected First Secretary of the Central Committee, the second-most powerful position in North Korea’s ruling Workers’ Party.

Ju Ae was introduced to the world in 2022 when she accompanied her father to an intercontinental ballistic missile launch.

North Korean state media has since described her as a “sweet girl” and a “great person who guides”—”hyangdo” in Korean—a term commonly used to describe top leaders and their successors.

Before 2022, the only confirmation of her existence came from former NBA star Dennis Rodman, who visited the North in 2013.