A tap, a kiss and careful choreography: In North Korea's succession drama, Kim Ju-ae is heir and accomplice

[A STUDY OF KIM JONG-UN 13]

Feb. 28, 2019, is a day North Korean leader Kim Jong-un will never forget. It is the date of the "no deal Hanoi summit," in which U.S. President Donald Trump walked out of negotiations in Vietnam, an insult the North Korean leader had never experienced before. Could Kim himself have ever imagined that, just over six years later, he would stand shoulder to shoulder with the leaders of China and Russia at the viewing gallery of Tiananmen Square in Beijing in September last year?

Kim’s elevated strategic status is a reality. He is no longer in a hurry. Even if Trump sends another overture, his new position would be to casually ignore it. How did the young leader of Northeast Asia’s poorest nation, once treated merely as a joke, reach his current position? What choices did Kim make to overcome the failure of the Hanoi summit, and how has North Korea changed as a result of those choices? How has this change altered South Korea’s security environment? We must now deal with a Kim of a different caliber. That is why we must study him now. - Ed.

At midnight on Jan. 1, as fireworks lit the sky over Pyongyang, North Korean leader Kim Jong-un leaned toward his daughter, Ju-ae, during a New Year's concert at Rungrado May Day Stadium and tapped her chair.

Ju-ae immediately cupped his face in her hands and kissed him on the cheek.

What was stranger, though, was what she did immediately after.

Before she had even settled back into her seat, she turned in the opposite direction and shot a quick glance at her mother, Ri Sol-ju. Her expression looked almost as if she was checking whether she had performed the scripted moment correctly.

Ri simply smiled and kept applauding.

That, in effect, was the full extent of Ju-ae's role that evening.

Media around the world covered the scene, with analysts concluding that her standing as heir apparent had been further cemented. The kiss on the cheek even drew a headline from Daily NK Japan, a Tokyo-based outlet focused on North Korean affairs, calling it "strange behavior" that is "stirring controversy."

There was a reason for the reaction.

The leader's hands on his daughter's waist, the two so close they were nearly embracing — an unusual degree of physical closeness between a father and daughter.

"The KCTV did not explain Ju-ae's identity or role, but what matters is that she is continuously being exposed to the public, raising her profile," assessed Atsuhito Isozaki, a professor at Japan's Keio University and a specialist on North Korea, in an interview with the Nikkei Shimbun in November. "She is being treated as someone special."

What Pyongyang is trying to show through these displays of physical closeness is, in fact, proximity to power. North Korean state media are demonstrating that Ju-ae is the only person permitted to touch the supreme leader freely in public.

No media outlet has transmitted Ju-ae's voice.

Instead, she already signals power through her presence.

Dressed for power

Every element is meticulously staged. From her hairstyles to her clothing, everything exposed through North Korean state media is a propaganda instrument designed to solidify the narrative of Ju-ae as heir.

When she first appeared in November 2022, she was defined by a white puffer jacket. The Ju-ae of 2026 sweeps in wearing a long leather coat, firing guns and driving tanks.

The closer she is positioned to her father, the more overt the staging around her becomes. On the day the pair watched a performance with hands clasped together tightly, she wore on her chest not a pin with the face of North Korean founder Kim Il Sung but a vivid red flower.

In North Korea, those exempt from wearing portrait badges of Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong-il — or, more recently, Kim Jong-un — have, until now, been essentially limited to the current leader himself and Ri. Yet Ju-ae has not worn a portrait badge of the supreme leader at a single official occasion on record. Her very existence, it seems, is taken as authentication of the Paektu bloodline's legitimacy.

What drew particular attention was the brooch Ju-ae wore at the International Women's Day event in March of last year, seated beside her father.

It appeared to be a magnolia — North Korea's national flower — rendered in a design evoking the national flag, with a red star at its center. Ju-ae had been repositioned: no longer just any daughter, but the daughter of the nation.

Ri also attracted notice when she wore an elaborate brooch in place of a portrait badge during a visit to China in 2018 — but the effect then read more as ornamentation.

On Jan. 1 this year, when Ju-ae visited a ceremony at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun for the New Year, she wore a butterfly brooch evoking the national flag that Ri had previously been associated with.

Then, barely two months later, a more elaborate and politically weighted accessory appeared. A single brooch quietly elevated Ju-ae above her mother.

Earlier, Ri had turned heads on Feb. 7, 2023, when she appeared wearing a necklace evoking the Hwasong-17, the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) dubbed a "monster."

North Korea deploys even a first lady's accessories as propaganda — and it is applying the same method to the development of Ju-ae's succession narrative.

From white puffer to leather coat 

The shift from Ju-ae as an unaffected child to "Little Ri" mimicking her mother's style, and then to a look entirely her own, was borne out by an analysis the JoongAng Ilbo conducted together with Jium & Gitdeum, a personal branding research institute specializing in nonverbal behavior, covering approximately 300 hours of photographs and footage in which Ju-ae appears.

Through a cumulative analysis of changes in her styling — clothing, accessories and hairstyles — the shifts in Ju-ae's image management fell into roughly three phases.

Phase one, from November 2022 through August 2023, emphasized the image of a protected child. Phase two, from September 2023 through the first half of 2024, built the image of an heir in the spotlight. Phase three, from the second half of 2024 onward, marked the full-scale construction of a succession narrative.

When Ju-ae first appeared at the ICBM Hwasong-17 test launch site in November 2022, her white puffer jacket and bangs covering her forehead were indistinguishable from other girls her age.

She wore the white puffer jacket only that one day. Yet as domestic and international media repeatedly circulated the image, her early persona became fixed around the innocence the white jacket projected.

"The styling and accessories chosen to highlight her youth appear designed to emphasize that she is Kim Jong-un's daughter," Kim Yeo-jeong, CEO of Jium & Gitdeum, explained. "There would also be an element of underscoring that she is of the pure Paektu bloodline."

Consistent with that reading, from November 2022 through August 2023, Ju-ae wore bangs with her hair pulled back in a ponytail in 14 out of 16 documented appearances alongside Kim — roughly 85 percent of the time. The look was that of an ordinary girl.

In phase two, however, she began appearing in formal suits and heels with her hair swept to one side in a half-updo similar to Ri's, projecting a maturity befitting a successor candidate.

The share of adult women's styles — two-piece suits and formal wear — rose from 22 percent to 78 percent during this period.

She also gravitated toward white blouses and dresses, again appearing to symbolize her status as the legitimate heir to the Paektu bloodline.

In these moments, the others around her — including Kim and Ri — were often dressed in dark colors. At a Hwasong-18 ICBM launch in December 2023, Ju-ae stood out in a pink fur coat while Kim and Ri wore dark-toned puffer jackets.

"If the first phase focused on imprinting the 'youthful image' strongly at her debut, phase two shows a rapid attempt to recast her as a public figure," said Lim Mun-su, the director of Jium & Gitdeum and a specialist in nonverbal behavioral analysis.

The long leather coat Ju-ae has favored in phase three creates an effect resembling a couple's matching look alongside her father.

It mirrors the way Kim, in his early years in power, deliberately adopted the image of his grandfather Kim Il Sung, the founding leader — a strategy to bolster his own underdeveloped authority. He is now applying the same approach to Ju-ae.

North Korea's fixation on establishing Ju-ae's legitimacy as rightful heir appears to be driven in part by the fact that she is neither a son nor Kim Jong-un's only child.

The prevailing understanding is that Kim has two sons and one daughter, with Ju-ae having an older brother and a younger brother.

The eldest son has never appeared publicly.

One intelligence source said, "The firstborn is not in a position to become Kim's successor by his standards" — leading analysts to speculate there may be reasons related to illness or disability.

Little verified information exists about the youngest child.

With the possibility that his existence could affect the succession structure centered on Ju-ae — and the possibility that her succession could affect his — North Korea continues staging every dimension of the "royal family" narrative so that all attention is absorbed by Ju-ae.

A royal drama, Pyongyang edition

North Korea is even styling Ju-ae's white horse.

The horse, introduced by the KCTV at the 75th Korean People's Army founding anniversary parade in February 2023 as "the finest steed most beloved by the respected child," was adorned with elaborate gold decorations that set it apart from the other horses on display.

Analysts noted the parallel with the horses ridden by Kim and his powerful younger sister Kim Yo-jong during an October 2019 Paektu Mountain cavalry march, which bore ornate star decorations distinguishing them from those of other officials — a similar statement of bloodline status.

Physical contact that even Ri has never been shown initiating — what might be called hierarchy-breaking touch — continues to be put on display.

It began when North Korean state media broadcast footage from a Dec. 27, 2022, commemorative photo session with soldiers and scientists who contributed to ICBM development, showing Ju-ae placing her hand on her father's shoulder and linking arms with him.

It was barely a month after her debut — and North Korea turned the image into a postage stamp.

The analysis holds that this repeated display of physical access granted only to Ju-ae reflects what the supreme leader's own secretive childhood has imprinted on him.

His mother, Ko Yong-hui, was a dancer of Korean-Japanese repatriated background and Kim Jong-il's third partner.

As a result, Kim Jong-un spent his childhood separated from his father, and there is reportedly not a single photograph of him with his grandfather, Kim Il Sung — despite being of the Paektu bloodline. The psychological impulse to compensate for that absence may be what he is projecting onto Ju-ae.

The whole world watches Ju-ae's every move — and yet Pongyang has never officially disclosed even her name. State media introduce her only as "the beloved" or "the respected and honored" or "the esteemed child."

There are accounts that her name may be "Ju-ye," but the most widely accepted version comes from Ryu Hyun-woo, a former acting North Korean ambassador to Kuwait who defected in 2019.

In his 2024 book "Kim Jong-un's Hidden Secret Vault," Ryu recounts that his father-in-law, Jeon Il-chun — a former director of the Korean Workers' Party Office 39 and the keeper of the Kim family's vault — had written on the back of a commemorative photograph taken with a then-30-month-old Ju-ae in September 2015: "Together with Princess Ju-ae," which was followed by the Chinese characters for her name.

When Ryu asked about the meaning of the name, Jeon told him that Kim Jong-un "said he chose the name Ju-ae because he wanted her to become a beautiful daughter who monopolizes the love of 10 thousand people."

Ju-ae, revealed only to the precise degree necessary

All of this is, in the end, a North Korean version of a series about a royal family — an unprecedented four-generation succession drama that Kim Jong-un is producing for an audience of eight billion, with Ju-ae moving day by day closer to center stage.

BY YOO JEE-HYE, CHUNG YEONG-GYO, SHIM SEOK-YONG  [seo.jieun1@joongang.co.kr]