SEOUL — Since taking workplace in January, President Trump has expressed an curiosity in restarting talks with Kim Jong Un, whom he met for a collection of unsuccessful denuclearization summits in 2018 and 2019.
However throwing chilly water on the newest hopes of a Spherical 2 is none aside from Kim Yo Jong, the highly effective youthful sister of the North Korean chief.
“Any attempt to deny the position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state which was established along with the existence of a powerful nuclear deterrent and fixed by the supreme law reflecting the unanimous will of all the DPRK people will be thoroughly rejected,” she stated within the assertion.
North Korean chief Kim Jong Un speaks throughout a ceremony to interrupt floor to construct 10,000 properties in Pyongyang, the capital, in March 2021.
(Korean Central Information Company through Related Press)
Whereas including that the non-public relationship between Trump and her brother Kim was “not bad,” she warned in opposition to making an attempt to leverage this into Pyongyang’s denuclearization, a state of affairs she referred to as “a mockery of the other party.”
Right here’s what to learn about Kim Yo Jong, who has variously been described as Kim’s mouthpiece and a possible successor:
Born in both 1987 or 1988, Kim Yo Jong is Kim’s solely sister, and one of many 5 kids born to Kim Jong Il, who dominated North Korea from 1994 to 2011.
She is the vice director of the Propaganda and Agitation Division on the Korean Staff’ Social gathering, in addition to a member of the State Affairs Fee, North Korea’s high decision-making authority.
Little is thought about her upbringing, aside from the truth that she spent a part of her youth in Bern, Switzerland, the place she was educated alongside her brother. She later attended Kim Il Sung College in North Korea.
Since making her first main public look at her father’s funeral in 2011, Kim Yo Jong has rapidly established herself as a key determine in her brother’s circle — a feat that none of her different siblings or half-siblings have managed.
Handed over for succession in favor of Kim Jong Un, her eldest brother Kim Jong Chul is now reportedly residing a quiet life away from politics. Her half-brother Kim Jong Nam, a playboy as soon as identified for his fondness for Disneyland — and who some recommended was a CIA informant — was assassinated at an airport in Malaysia in 2017, on orders believed to have come from chief Kim.
Kim Yo Jong, who’s believed to be one of many North Korean chief’s most trusted aides, with appreciable affect over international coverage, has routinely been noticed together with her brother throughout vital public occasions, reminiscent of these showcasing the nation’s nuclear weapons, and high-profile worldwide journeys. She was a part of the North Korean delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in 2018. At her brother’s summit with then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in that yr, Kim Yo Jong attended as a particular envoy.
North Korean youths and college students march from the Pyongyang Youth Park open-air theater to Kim Il Sung Sq. throughout a protest in June 2020.
(Jon Chol Jin / Related Press)
Since assuming her present place as vice director of the Staff’ Social gathering’s Propaganda and Agitation Division in 2014, she has been on the entrance strains of North Korea’s ideological messaging, writing a lot of Pyongyang’s signature invective. She was blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury Division in 2017.
After strikes by the U.S. and South Korea to bolster their navy alliance in 2023, she referred to as President Biden “an old man with no future” and former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol “a hungry dog barking with the joy of getting a bone.”
Final yr, in response to North Korean defectors in South Korea sending balloons full of propaganda over the border — which prompted North Korea to retaliate with trash-filled balloons of its personal — she threatened a “gruesome and dear price” for what Pyongyang has lengthy seen as hostile acts, denouncing the defectors as “scum.”
Kim Yo Jong’s pedigree and political rise have fueled hypothesis that she would possibly in the future be an inheritor to her older brother. However with succession having been intergenerational, specialists have stated the extra possible inheritor will likely be one in all chief Kim’s kids.
South Korean intelligence officers consider that Kim has three kids, with the eldest and youngest being sons. Even supposing North Korea has all the time been led by males, the one little one to have appeared in public is his younger daughter, Kim Ju Ae, whose rising presence at state occasions together with her father has raised the likelihood this custom could in the future be damaged.
Nonetheless, the North Korean chief is believed to undergo an array of well being points associated to his weight, reminiscent of hypertension and diabetes. Specialists together with Thae Younger-ho, a former North Korean diplomat who defected to South Korea in 2016, say this makes Kim Yo Jong’s function all of the extra essential.
In an interview with South Korean media in 2023, Thae expressed his perception that the Kim household’s grip on the nation could not survive one other technology, arguing that odd North Koreans have been more and more disillusioned by dynastic rule.
Nonetheless, he stated, “if Kim Jong Un suddenly dies, the system is such that interim leadership can only pass to the No. 2, Kim Yo Jong.”
