Commentary: North Korea faces a troubled succession as Kim grooms daughter to be his likely heir

BUSAN, South Korea: Over the past two years, there has been intense speculation surrounding leadership succession in the world’s most secretive state.
The catalyst? A photo from November 2022 of a cherubic young girl with a ponytail walking hand in hand with her father.
That photo was anything but an ordinary daddy-daughter moment. For that man was North Korean leader Kim Jong Un and the little girl – reportedly 10 years old at the time – his likely heir.
That the picture was taken in front of a giant intercontinental ballistic missile was also telling of North Korea’s weapons programme.
Since then, the girl in the picture, Kim Ju Ae, has been photographed with her father at more than 20 official events. She’s traded her schoolgirl ponytail for a more mature look, fuelling even further speculation that she is being groomed to succeed her father.
North Korea has been ruled by the Kim family for three generations.
North Korea’s first supreme leader, Kim Il Sung, died in 1994. He left power to his son, Kim Jong Il. That Kim died in 2011, turning over power to his son, Kim Jong Un.
These power transitions have always been steeped in intrigue, with purges and positional competition one might associate with a regal court of old.
The great struggle in this court has always been succession. The Kims have fathered multiple children by multiple women, leading to constant speculation over who might be elevated. And behind the Kims, of course, is a very large army. The possibility of a coup always lurks. To insure the army’s loyalty, the Kims have alternated between purging the officer corps and showering it with gifts.
Yet more uncertainty atop these tensions has always been the ill health of the Kim leaders, and the possibility that they might die suddenly or be permanently debilitated. All of them have lived a notoriously hard-partying lifestyle.
The first was obese for most of his reign. The second was a heavy drinker who suffered a pancreatic stroke. The third and current Kim weighs more than 140kg, smokes, and likely has diabetes, according to the South Korean intelligence service. Who knows who will take over if he were to die suddenly.
Analysts have long worried about such transitional unrest. I have participated in North Koren scenario gaming, for example, where the incident provoking internal factional conflict was a botched succession.
That issue is once again cropping up, because Kim – who reportedly has three children – appears to be promoting his daughter to take over, rather than his son.
This is unusual. The son would be the obvious choice. He is the eldest child, and more important, he is a male in North Korea’s highly conservative society.
Although technically communist, North Korea is not progressive on gender norms. Where other communist states created some room for women in the labour force and even government, North Korea has not. It has cleaved to Korea’s cultural Confucian legacy which limits roles for women and promotes sons within the family.
Little is known about Kim’s son, not even his name. His whereabouts are similarly unknown. He would only be 14 now, so he is probably not a political threat, at least not yet.
Perhaps he is disinterested in politics. This has happened with other children of the Kim family. If he does not want to enter the family business, he is wise to keep a low profile. It is not uncommon for individuals in Kim family struggles to meet unhappy ends.
Ju Ae, on the other hand, has been increasingly visible in public. Kim has taken to bringing her to public events and showing her various elements of North Korean state power, including missiles and parades. This is the normal route to ascension.
The North Korean media has also taken to giving her various honorifics – “respected child”, “beloved child” and “a great person of guidance”. In December last year, media reports claimed that Kim had referred to his daughter as “Morning Star General”, a term previously used to describe Kim Il Sung.
The November 2022 photo of her holding hands with her father at the Hwasong-17 missile launch has also been turned into a postage stamp.
If Ju Ae is the choice, Kim is wise to start promoting her now. She will need years of grooming to take over. Kim will need to work hard to convince the old boys’ network which actually administers North Korea – below the political level of the Kim family – to accept her. It is not easy to see the old guard generals of the army, for example, accepting a young woman in her 20s or 30s.
Ju Ae also faces some likely competition in her aunt, Kim Yo Jong. Yo Jong is Kim Jong Un’s sister and has been a prominent regime personage for a decade now. She was closely involved in the 2018 summit in Singapore between Kim and then US President Donald Trump.
Yo Jong has generally been a hawkish voice. She has threatened South Korea and the United States with nuclear retaliation, and said repeatedly that North Korea would never denuclearise.
There is some speculation that she has played the hawk as a role to portray her brother as more gentle and diplomatic. But in a highly militarised, paranoid system like North Korea, such hawkishness likely plays well among elites. Siblings of the previous great leader are the sort of people who get purged in North Korea. So if Kim’s health declines as he ages, his daughter and sister appear, at the moment at least, on collision course.
The jockeying for succession in North Korea will accelerate. Kim is now 40, and his health problems will only worsen. Both of his likely successors are women – which would be highly unusual in North Korea.
These two women also have roughly equal claims: One is a direct descendant, but young and inexperienced; the other is a blood relative with more time in the system. But who knows if the country’s deeply rooted, deeply sexist old boys’ network would even accept them?
Kim will spend the next several decades trying to force one of them onto his male-dominated leadership. The transition on his death will likely be far more contested than the last two.
Robert Kelly (@Robert_E_Kelly) is a professor of political science at Pusan National University.