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This Article is an extended version of a Strategic Essay published in the March-April 2019 issue of Strategic Analysis (Volume
43, Issue 2, pp. XX-XX), © Institute for Defence Studies and Analyses, New Delhi and available online at:
[https://doi.org/10.1080/09700161.2019.1593632]
North Korea's Princess:
The Strange Life and Dangerous Future of
Kim Yo-jong
Author: Jed Lea-Henry
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Glossary of Names (detailed as relevant):
The Kim Family
Kim Il-sung = Grandfather – ‘Great Leader’
Kim Jong-il = Father – ‘Dear Leader’
Song Hye-rim = Actress – First Mistress
Kim Yong-suk = Wife to Kim Jong-il
Ko Yong-hui = Dancer – Second Mistress – Mother to Kim Yo-jong
Kim Ok = Last Mistress and Personal Secretary
Jang Song-taek = Uncle (By marriage to Kim Kyong-hui)
Kim Kyong-hui = Aunt (Kim Jong-il’s Sister)
Kim Jong-nam = Eldest Son – Son to Song Hye-rim (First Mistress)
Kim Sul-song = Eldest Daughter – Daughter to Kim Yong-suk (Wife)
Kim Jong-chol = Second Eldest Son – Eldest Son to Ko Yong-hui (Second Mistress) – ‘Pak-chol’ or ‘Chol-pak’
(Alias in Switzerland)
Kim Jong-un = Third Eldest Son – Second Son to Ko Yong-hui (Second Mistress) – Ruler of North Korea – ‘Pak-
un’ or ‘Un-pak’ (Alias in Switzerland)
*** Kim Yo-jong = Youngest Daughter – Daughter to Ko Yong-hui (Second Mistress) – ‘North Korea’s
Princess’ – Pak Mi-hyang (Alias in Switzerland)
Others
Ri Sol-ju = Wife of Kim Jong-un
Choe Song = Husband of Kim Yo-jong – Son of Choe Ryong-hae
Choe Ryong-hae = Vice Chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea – Vice Chairman of the State Affairs
Commission – Director of the Organization Guidance Department
Ri Jae-il = Member of Kim Jong-il’s Personal Secretariat – Previous Director of the Propaganda and Agitation
Department
Kim Ki-nam = Former Vice-chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea – Former Director of the Propaganda and
Agitation Department
Ri Yong-mu = Vice-Marshal of the Korean Peoples’ Army – Vice Chairman of the National Defence – Married to
Kim Il-sung’s Sister
Choe Hwi = Deputy-Director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department
Kim Yong-nam = Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Peoples’ Assembly
*****
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Through it all she must have loved him. It is, after all, hard to really hate a parent.
From the Gobi desert, humidity had been growing for weeks, stretching from China, across
the Yellow Sea, the Bay of Korea, and into an early Pyongyang winter. Further north, cold, dry
Siberian air, running east across the tundra from Lake Baikal, suddenly changed direction and flowed
down into the Korean peninsula. The two atmospheres crashed together on the 28th of December,
2011, as a three hour funeral procession was snaking its way toward the Kumsusan Memorial Palace.
The lead car, an imported Lincoln Continental carried a massive passport-style photograph of the
dead man, the next car only a wreath of flowers. All the action was further back. Enclosed by a
military escort, was a single black vehicle with matching black coffin balanced on the roof.
The eight people walking with the casket, struggling into the blizzard, included an army
chief, political leader, a military general, a party secretary, a member of the State Security
Department, the Chairman of the Peoples’ Assembly, and an uncle by marriage. Of course her
brother was there too, but Kim Yo-jong was forced to watch from the sidelines as the business of
mourning her father was taken away from her. At a ceremony before the funeral convoy began
moving toward Kim Il-sung Square, she stood, arms flat to her sides, on the edge of the stage,
sandwiched between a state premier and a munitions official. And when, finally, she was allowed
her moment, when the body had returned to the palace (doubling as a mausoleum), Yo-jong was
once again relegated to obscurity, walking tourist-like around the roped-off velvet perimeter; just
another face in a long line of bureaucrats. She was 24 years old at the time.
(Kim Yo-jong at her Father’s Funeral)
Dictators are almost always incorrigible womanizers. The Dear Leader of North Korea, Kim
Jong-il, was no different. Jong-il was noticeably shorter than his father, the Great Leader, and had a
strange sense of fashion that saw him return to wearing – outdated even by North Korean standards
– monochromatic, Mao-styled jumpsuits. More often than not pairing these drab grey outfits with
women’s designer sunglasses, his emasculation and effeminacy were never hidden. A life lived in the
shadows of a loud, gregarious father, seemed to have squeezed his personality tight; leaving no
place for any meaningful form of self-expression, and certainly none for anything recognisable as
charisma. The shadow of the Great Leader bore down so heavily upon the Dear Leader that through
18 years in charge of North Korea – as an unchallengeable demi-god ruling over a population trained
to see him as their final defender against an aggressive outside world – he only found the courage to
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speak publically on one occasion. Instead he looked inward, finding satisfaction in wealth, toys and
sex.
Today some of this legacy lives on. The ‘pleasure squad’ – a harem of teenage prostitutes –
still lingers in the hallways of the presidential palaces as a fairly unguarded secret. But a pregnant
mistress is something more; the dishonour is more difficult to ignore. Before Jong-il married Kim
Yong-suk, he already had an heir to the throne. Kim Jong-Nam – later to become a chubby,
cartoonish playboy, exiled to China and beyond – was born to Song Hye-rim, a relatively successful
North Korean actress (she would later die in exile). But in Korean tradition, families – specifically
fathers – choose brides. Hye-rim just wasn’t marriage material. Instead the daughter of a high-
ranking military official, a real member of Pyongyang’s elite, was handpicked. Kim Yong-suk became
first-lady to the North Korean state, and soon gave birth to a daughter Kim Sul-song. As arranged
marriages go, it was typical – business-like. The Dear Leader didn’t have a say in the marriage, but as
always he did control the direction of his sex-life. Quickly estranged, and shuttled overseas with her
daughter (Kim Sul-song lives in Paris to this day), Yong-suk would die knowing that her memory
would be moved into the background, as her husband, then with a new mistress, Ko Yong-hui – a
dancer at the Mansudae Art Troupe – began building a structure of inheritance around three new
children. The eldest, a boy, Kim Jong-chol, seems to have caught the same affliction as the first son,
Jong-nam. After Jong-chol returned from boarding school in Switzerland, he wasn’t the same person.
His mind was on music, romance, and the outside world (as seems to be the custom, he is now also
living out his days in exile; occasionally popping up at Eric Clapton concerts around Europe). The next
child had been to the same school in Switzerland, at the same time as his older brother, but had
returned ruthless, determined, and importantly, nostalgic for his nation. When the Dear Leader was
announced dead to the weeping masses, state media was quick to point out that his son, Kim Jong-
un, was now the “Great Successor”i. Behind this mess, she walked. Young, and the wrong gender to
be considered a threat to the throne, Kim Yo-jong, the last child of the Dear Leader, watched as her
family convulsed around her; twisting, fighting, exiling and assassinating.
(Kim Jong-chol at school in Switzerland)
As grandfathers tend to be, Kim Il-sung – from whom all this chaos trickled-down – was a
traditionalist. As the head of the family, and also – as he saw it – the standard bearer for all Korean
culture, the Great Leader found the last crop of bastard children hard to stomach. So Kim Yo-jong
was ostracised from birth, shuttled away with her mother and two brothers to a residence on
Changgwang Hill. She was still in central Pyongyang, and had impressive views of the city. To the
west was the People’s Palace of Culture; North she could gaze up a tributary to the Pothong river,
past the perpetually under-construction, triangular, Ryugyong hotel and catch sight of the USS
Pueblo floating as a tourist attraction to celebrate its 1968 capture and the ‘defeat’ of the
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Americans; but it was to the East that meaning could be found. The Mansudae Art Theatre, the old
stomping ground where her mother had first caught the eye of her father, dominated the view; a gift
of sorts to a dancer-come-mistress, who was then sitting out her days – children in tow – in what
was luxury; but still, unmistakably, a prison. The captives all knew when the doors of their cell would
open, and when they would be welcomed back into Pyongyang’s elite – they were waiting for their
grandfather to die.
Kim Jong-il was himself an eldest son. And he knew what importance it held, he knew that it
was down to this chance event that the North Korean state would fall to him; an extravagant gift of
inheritance. Importance falls downward, in Korean society, from this pinnacle. Second son, third son
etc. Then first daughter, second daughter, and so it goes. There is no place in all of this for the off-
shoot, illegitimate family. (Though Kim Jong-Nam, as eldest son to Jong-il, faced similar isolation and
secrecy; he was, after all, also illegitimate). They are an embarrassment that needs to be kept as
quiet as possible. Lucky for Kim Yo-jong, her father, Jong-il, had a soft spot for his final generation of
children; often seen cooing over his young daughter, calling her his “sweet, sweet Yo-jong” and
“Princess”ii. Where house arrest is considered too cruel, and when assassination out of the question,
the Kim dynasty has a tried-and-tested back-up plan for dealing with problematic family members –
send them overseas.
It started in the early 1990’s, with meandering vacations to China, Japan and Europe. As nice
as it must have been to make their own choices, including removing the dress uniforms of the
Korean Peoples’ Army that they were often forced to wear, it was clearly, also, an unpleasant
experience. Anyone that has ever tried their hand at extended travel, and knows the adventure of it,
the freedom in every moment, also knows the deep loneliness of it all. The mind, suddenly loose
from routine, tends to focus inward; you think, you doubt, you romanticise. It can be a hell. Her
mother likely saw this in the three children, and the nomadic experiment was soon over. A longer
term solution was needed. One-by-one, gradually the children were sent to the Swiss mountains, to
an isolated, and unmistakably elite, boarding school near Bern – the ‘International School of Bern’.
Jong-chol tested the waters, and by all accounts loved the experience. He played soccer and
basketball, tasted western culture, learnt German, French and English; and importantly found
friends with whom he could relate (the children of other wealthy, dysfunctional families). And soon
enough, their Grandfather, the Great Leader, was dead. But what he left behind was famine, and a
period of unparalleled suffering and social upheaval. Their father, Kim Jong-il, was now in power, but
was also in no position to start pushing through any changes that might make him seem like
something other than a traditionalist. He needed the regime, still loyal to the dead man, to believe,
at least for the time being, that the son was a second coming of the Great Leader. Kim Jong-un
waited two years for this to play-out; as Jong-chol was finding himself in the Bernese Alps, his little
brother’s arrival was delayed by the 1994 leadership transition, and the uncertainty of it all. Waiting
for an indication that their fortunes would change, that the Dear Leader would assert himself and
bring his family in from the cold, soon grew tiresome. So in 1996, Jong-un flew out to join his
brother. Yo-jong, four years younger than Jong-un, enrolled only six months later. From their new
Swiss homes, the three siblings waited; expecting a message, a clear signal that they could finally
return to Pyongyang, and step out of the shadows.
But when the two younger siblings arrived in Switzerland, they found an older brother who
wasn’t too keen to see them. After three years by himself, going by an alias of ‘Pak-chol’ or ‘Chol-
pak’, big brother Jong-chol had fought through early shyness, made a loyal group of friends, and had
even managed to largely jettison the hulking bodyguard who was tasked with keeping him safe.
Having found a niche for himself, and managing to convince those around him that he was the son of
a South Korean Chaebol family (large business conglomerate) and not a brutal dictator, Jong-chol
saw the arrival of his little brother, renamed for the purpose as ‘Pak-un’ or ‘Un-pak’, to be a
problem; a monstrous cramp on his style. By the time that Yo-jong – under the alias Pak Mi-hyang –
turned up, it had already been played-out. Instead of attending the International School of Bern, she
instead joined Jong-un at ‘Liebefeld-Steinhölzli’iii. It was a similarly elite school, and was still in Bern,
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but had the benefit of being nowhere close to Jong-chol. Lonely, and again cruelly discarded by his
own family, Jong-un found in his little sister a safety net, a source of comfort and loyalty that he
struggled to find elsewhere. Unlike Jong-chol, the younger siblings had in each other someone they
could always fall back on, and find company, friendship and security. As nice as this sounds, it is also
what stops people taking risks, trying new things and making new friends. Yo-jong and her needy
older brother, Jong-un, spent nearly four years together studying in the Alps – they lived out of the
nearby North Korean embassy, kept their bodyguards close, and made little effort to make the most
of this rare opportunity to experience a new life. Together in their emotional isolation, they became
inseparably close. Through this, a guilty father would send them regular presents from home –
dancers and musicians to entertain and ease the boredom. The only trips that Yo-jong seems to have
made during this time were to meet her mother in other parts of Switzerland – and occasionally
France – who was then being treated for a fairly aggressive form of breast cancer.
(Earliest Known Picture of Kim Yo-jong)
In 2000, it was over. Yo-jong, along with Jong-un, returned to Pyongyang not because they
graduated, but because they were ordered back. The famine was over and their father felt more
secure in himself, but he had a problem. The eldest son, Kim Jong-nam, more interested in women,
riches and fame, was spending very little time back in North Korea, and showing very little interest in
taking over the country (or at least ruling in the same way as his father and grandfather). Kim Yong-
chol had caught a similar affliction. The life he had made for himself, of close friendships, music, and
travel, was soon the only life he wanted. The thought of returning to the stultifying, hierarchical
North Korea was anathema to all that he had become. The eldest sister, and only legitimate child,
Kim Sul-song, had moved to France ‘to study’ along with her mother (increasingly slighted by her
husband), and had never returned. It was suddenly all down to Kim Jong-un – a nation that had
never accepted him, suddenly had its arms open, pleading for his homecoming. And where he went,
his loyal sister followed.
But once back in Pyongyang, she was on her own. Her brother, then nearly 18, was shuttled
off to Kim Il-sung University, where, now surrounded by students forced to adore him and desperate
for his favour, he settled into a groove that escaped him in Switzerland. Yo-jong was only 14, and
due to her interrupted schooling had only completed the international equivalent of the sixth grade.
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Torn away from her brother, Yo-jong falls off the map, both inside and outside North Korea. Very
little is known about her during the next few years. She attends secondary school in Pyongyang, and
after a few years alone to think things over, seems to have developed a taste for the family business.
This is at least according to her father, Kim Jong-il, who bragged to international visitors in 2002 that
his younger daughter was fascinated by diplomacy and politics, and that he saw her pursuing a
career within his country’s politburo. She likely didn’t finish secondary school, but moved on to
university nonetheless.
It is often said that nothing matures a child more than the death of a parent, and so it
seemed to go for Yo-jong. In 2004, the breast cancer finally overcame her mother. With so few close
friends or family in her life, this must have come as a knife slash in time. And for a period afterwards,
she seems to have been tempted towards the dilettantism of her two eldest brothers, Kim Jong-nam
and Kim Jong-chol, enrolling in sporadic and unrelated coursework at a still undisclosed western
European university. This was a very brief flirtation; her heart just wasn’t in it. Before long she was
back in Pyongyang, and with a new independence, of sorts. Instead of following her brother into Kim
Il-sung University, North Korea’s elite institution, Yo-jong instead chose to attend Kim Il-sung Military
University in Mangyongdae-guyok; the outer limits of northern Pyongyang. Only begrudgingly
returning to Kim Il-sung University in order to take certain computer science courses that were
unavailable at the Military College. It is hard to grasp just what these years were like for her, or what
plans she was building for herself, but she re-emerged publically in 2007 as a seemingly committed
member of her father’s regime. Holding relatively minor positions within the ruling party, it was
plausible that Yo-jong was building toward a political career in her own right, that she had found
passion during her university days, and was then set on living it out. If this were true, then it all came
crashing down in 2008 when her father, Kim Jong-il, an unhealthy specimen of a man – spending
most of his time in bed or drinking imported liquor – suffered two ischemic strokes, only months
apart. And suddenly, it was on!
To pass down the leadership of a business or company, from family member to family
member, is always a dangerous exercise. Hierarchies build over time, people develop skills and prove
their worth, all with the incentive of promotion. The decision to parachute in a relative, simply
because they are a relative, sends a booming message through the organisation. Previously held
incentive structures are over, the highest position is now never achievable, and the highly talented
will likely be governed by, and will need to ingratiate themselves to, their inferiors. To muddy the
process further, Korea still holds some residual hangovers from its Confucian heritage, meaning that
the more senior someone is (in age and experience), the more deserving they are of reward and
respect. This becomes ever more problematic when the organisation in question is a nation, and the
position at the top has a god-like import. So from the moment her father’s lifestyle caught up with
him, and his sluggish blood vessels finally blocked-up, Yo-jong’s future was no longer her own. Her
new job, one that would have no apparent end, was to help to ease some of the tumult that would
be dug-up by the next hereditary succession. She was no longer being positioned for a career, but
rather as a buttress around who was likely then to be next in line for the throne – her brother, and
closest confidant, Kim Jong-un.
In 2009, Yo-jong made her first overt appearance on North Korean state mediaiv. Her father
was up and moving, if only a little, and spending more-and-more time in the scenic beach city of
Wonsan. In a carefully orchestrated media event, with no discernible deeper policy objective, and
with an ailing Dear Leader not managing to prop himself up for the photograph, his two sons Jong-
chol and Jong-un, took centre stage. Either side of them were two ageing, but unmistakably high-
ranking bureaucrats. On their right was, Ri Jae-il, a member of Jong-il’s Personal Secretariat,
reporting on matters of art and media, and for a time, Director of the Propaganda and Agitation
Department. On their left was Kim Ki-nam, a hold-over from his father’s rule (someone who had
helped Jong-il with his own succession), a one-time Vice-chairman of the Workers’ Party of Korea,
and then holder of a Directorship of the Propaganda and Agitation Department. Standing sheepishly
on the outer rim of the photograph, rigid and alert, with a small but comfortable gap between her
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and the men, was Yo-jong. This was all at the Wonsan University of Agriculture – but none of it
mattered. The sole purpose of the photograph was the drip-feed of Jong-il’s ‘Little Princess’ to the
broader public, and to send much sharper message to anyone in a position of power that might still
begrudge the idea of hereditary succession. Kim Jong-un would be the next, failing that Jong-chol,
and their sister Yo-jong would support the process from the bureaucracy that was being forced
artlessly down the viewer’s throat – the Propaganda and Agitation Department.
(Visit to Wonsan University of Agriculture; Kim Yo-jong, Far Right of Picture)
The trajectory of Yo-jong’s life was never smooth, and soon enough she fell off the map
again. Everyone was looking at her brother and the increasingly circus-like propaganda that was
building around him; clutching breathlessly for excuses to mention his name. As the Dear Leader was
turning increasingly frail, they were trying to make up for lost time, trying to build a cult of
personality around the next Kim. Kim Il-sung had a decade of nationalistic, anti-Japanese, freedom-
fighting, myth behind him when he first seized the North Korean state as his own. Kim Jong-il had
longer. From the 1970’s he was being unambiguously talked-up to god-like status, and positioned for
power. Maybe he had bought into the propaganda and couldn’t imagine himself suddenly on his
death bed, maybe he was wavering over who his successor would be, or maybe, as his eldest son
Kim Jong-nam later claimed from exile in Macau, he was considering doing away with hereditary rule
altogether. Regardless, when the decision was made to anoint Kim Jong-un, there was only a couple
of years available to make it all stick, and to spare the young man the fate of most failed dictators
and deposed kings.
On-the-spot guidance is a staple diet of North Korean propaganda. These are essentially
highly orchestrated field trips by the North Korean leadership, where prominent officials, more often
than not the Supreme Leader himself, walk around factories, work places and military sites, casting
off casual observations, that are then later spun, and glorified into invaluable, industry changing
theses’. This became Yo-jong’s immediate lot in life, dutifully following her father, brothers and
other important officials, as played-up for the camera; though always in the background,
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photographed to the edge of scenes; an omnipresent, yet entirely forgettable presence. In one of
her more prominent moments, this time at a photo session for the Third Conference of the Workers’
Party of Korea in September 2010, Yo-jong was pushed, if only slightly, back into the media
spotlightv. She had spent time working in the National Defence Commission, and then in her father’s
Personal Secretariat, and was finally being offered a morsel of individual recognition. Always in the
background, this time she stood directly behind Ri Yong Mu, Vice-Marshal of the Korean People’s
Army, her great uncle by marriage, and importantly Vice Chairman of the National Defence
Commission. This was resume building North Korean-style. Yet in this moment at the Workers’ Party
Conference, she was placed insultingly next to Kim Ok. Another member of the Personal Secretariat,
Kim OK was also her father’s then-mistress, de facto wife, and stain to the memory of Yo-jong’s
mother, Ko Yong-hui. All-in-all this was a rather clumsy, and clearly futile attempt by Kim Jong-il to
protect his new mistress, and he must have known this. If after his death the succession went well,
and Kim Jong-un was ushered into power with Yo-jong by his side, then there could be no place for
mistresses, or even other wives. Other women would mean other options, other centres of power,
maybe other children; an unacceptable headache for a new regime. So as far as any official
propaganda would be concerned, there was only ever one first-lady during their father’s rule.
History would be airbrushed, and counter-narratives, such as Kim Ok, would be killed or exiled. In his
final months, perhaps an increasingly sentimental Dear Leader was finding the reality of ruling North
Korea a little hard to bear.
Dutiful as ever, Yo-jong continued to live her life for her father and brother. Still working just
behind the scenes, sneaking quietly into the edges of official photography, in May and then August
2011 she, by some accounts travelled with her father as he paid homage to the traditional sponsors
of the North Korean state; the two countries that have historically found the maintenance of the Kim
dynasty to be in their national interest – China and Russia. Without the support of these two
overseers, his son’s ascension would be difficult; with them actively opposed or working against it, it
would be impossible. There were lessons here for Yo-jong that might otherwise have slipped-by
under the weight of everyday propaganda. Her country could pretend otherwise, and would no
doubt continue to do so, but through it all, still needed some friends outside its borders. Beyond the
mock-up of a fake enemy (they conclusively, already had this), diplomacy would need to play a role
in the longevity of the family’s regime.
The state narrative of North Korea, the story that keeps the Kim’s in power and the
population uncomplaining, is built as much around international politics as it is domestic. In the mid-
1990’s, soon after the first transition of power from Kim Il-sung to Kim Jong-il, the country and the
regime was in crisis. Always looking at themselves through the lens of South Korea and the need for
reunification, official propaganda had been building an idea that their Southern brothers and sisters
were impoverished in comparison, and desperate to join with the North once again. In 1994, a series
of steadily compounding mistakes in planning all cleaved together into a nationwide famine, and this
lie suddenly became impossible to believe. Something was needed to explain away this economic
inferiority, and justify the continuation of the regime. This would be Songun – or ‘Military First
Policy’vi. The everyday suffering of North Koreans was now due to aggressive international enemies,
particularly the United States, trying desperately to destroy the Korean race. In this battle for
survival, the Kim dynasty was all that was still keeping the wolves from the door. But it would have
to come at a cost – money and resources would be diverted from the people for the military effort.
They would have to take care of themselves. And it worked! North Korea found its modern identity
in a right-wing race based nationalism, and importantly in an ever menacing external enemy. For all
the talk of Juchevii, of independence, of self-determination, North Korea was increasingly defining
itself by the outside world.
On the 17th of December, 2011, Kim Jong-il suffered what state media would describe later
as a “severe myocardial infarction along with a heart attack”viii, and died fairly immediately. But
none of this was announced until the 19th. For two unbelievably tense days, the North Korean
succession plan hung not on the whims of the Kim family, but on the regime elite who briefly held
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the power to shift the direction of their country. Kim Jong-un, with Kim Yo-jong at his side, waited
and worried. Whatever the internal machinations were, this inexplicable delay in announcing the
Dear Leader’s death eventually came, and through all the fanciful media reports of animals coming
to Pyongyang to express their grief and the ice of Lake Paektu cracking “so loud, it seemed to shake
the Heavens and the Earth”ix, there was also the announcement of the “Great Successor” and the
comfort of “absolute surety that the leadership of Comrade Kim Jong-un will lead and succeed the
great task of revolutionary enterprise.”x Formalities were needed, and Yo-jong compliantly followed
her brother around, crying on command, for the 11 days between their father’s death and the
funeral. Knowing full-well that despite being important enough to appear in public, she was still so
far from power that she was not even named as one of the 242 members of the funeral committee.
As her brother cemented his power, this would change. Three days after the funeral, on New Year’s
Eve, as his father was being embalmed for posterity at the Kumsusan Memorial Palace, Kim Jong-un,
wasting no time, took official control of the North Korean army; and Yo-jong was finally on her way.
(Kim Yo-jong shadowing her brother at her father’s funeral)
Through the circus of it all, and the Machiavellian fear, Yo-jong had lost one of the last remaining
certainties in her life. The people that ‘shared’ her social circle, were always coming-and-going. Exile
assassination, even defection was common – her aunt defected in 1998 – but for a child that had
spent so much of her life in isolation, only ever flirting, when permitted, with new crowds, this was
different. Seven years after burying her mother, her father was now dead; she was starkly more
alone in the world. Looking around her, there was very little remaining. Her two eldest siblings were
becoming strangers to her, Jong-chol, her eldest maternal brother was suddenly in the
uncomfortable position of having to lay low, so as to not risk undermining the transition of power
(he did not return to North Korea for the funeral). And Jong-un, understandably busy running the
country, had also recently married a modern-minded wife, Ri Sol-ju, who not content to play the
traditional Korean house-maker, was increasingly becoming political, accompanying the new leader
on official visits.
In this shrinking world, Yo-jong had two remaining bulwarks. Family members that had been
with her from the beginning, who had been tasked with easing through the transition, and who had
stepped into the void left behind by her mother’s death, and now her father’s – her aunt, Kim
Kyong-hui, sister to Kim Jong-il; and her uncle by this marriage, Jang Song-taek. Song-taek, a
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talented, if not brutal, political dealer, was assigned to the central role of consolidating Jong-un’s
power. Leaving Kyong-hui, the more delicate job of playing surrogate mother to Yo-jong, and finding
her a place within the dynastic succession. Short on options, they returned to the path that Kim
Jong-il had set Yo-jong down, a path members of her family, the mythicised Paektu bloodline, only
ever payed lip service to – resume building. With her aunt by her side, Yo-jong returned to her
position at the National Defence Commission. Beyond this day job, she freelanced as her brother’s
tour manager, escorting him around the country on state visits, whenever the space could be found.
Whilst learning the inner-details of government bureaucracy, she was also, by not leaping ahead too
far, too fast, ingratiating herself to non-family members of the regime. But perhaps most
importantly, she was keeping public, and getting noticed.
Grooming Yo-jong for a position as a central party cadre, her aunt eventually managed to pull
the right strings, and place her niece in a new position overseeing state security. In December 2013,
Yo-jong was photographed at a Workers Party congress sitting next to Choe Ryong-hae, a statesman
of unchallengeable character due to his years as a resistance fighter with Kim Il-sung, his political
service to Kim Jong-il, and now his station as near to being second in command under Kim Jong-un
as North Korea’s convoluted hierarchy offers. Yo-jong now had a foot inside the inner sanctum and,
through Choe Ryong-hae, access to new on-the-job training at the famed Organization and Guidance
Department. What Choe Ryong-hae got was a future bride for his son, Choe Song. And it came at just
the right time. The engagement to Choe Song, gave Yo-jong a new, expansive safety net, at the exact
moment that her brother pulled her old one away. On December 3rd, 2013, her uncle Jang Song-taek
was unceremoniously dismissed from his official positions. A few days later, images and mentions of
him were being edited out of old news reports. On December 8th, at a made for purpose, expanded
political meeting of the central party, Song-taek was forced to sit through a series of lengthy
“factionalist”, “counter-revolutionary”, “anti-party”xi accusations. It ended with a public arrest, and a
hurried execution. Yo-jong’s soon-to-be father-in-law, at the prodding of her brother, was running
the mock-trial. Aunt Kim Kyong-hui survived the purge, but not indignity. Her husband was dead,
and she would be forced to live out her days under strict house arrest. Yo-jong’s wedding would be
delayed.
(Kim Yo-jong left, with her aunt Kim Kyong-hui)
The impact of this upheaval on Yo-jong’s life is hard to fully picture. Whether it was from
mourning the loss of more close family members, or from a new appreciable fear of how things
12
might also turn against her one day, Yo-jong dropped out of the media in the months following the
purges. It took four months for her to psychologically process the events, and reconcile herself with
the new world around her. On March 9th, 2014, back by her brother’s side, Yo-jong made her most
significant public appearance until that point. The gig was fairly straightforward, casting a vote for
the Supreme People’s Assembly, but in the media coverage she was referred to by name, and
recognised as a “Senior Official”xii of the Central Committee. This was the first time that she stepped
out of the background, and had been an individual target of propaganda. Later that year, when Kim
Jong-un disappeared from public life with a variety of medical problems – returning after a month
with a walking stick – Yo-jong briefly took over the management of some of his state responsibilities.
Yet behind this public image, her career was moving forward in deliberate ways. She was soon back
on the path that her father had laid out for her during that first photo-op in 2009 at the Wonsan
University of Agriculture. The old men in the photograph were being moved out and, in November
2014, Yo-jong was named Vice-Director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department. By July 2015,
Kim Ki-nam was pushed out to pasture – officially named Director, but only in a ceremonial capacity
– and she moved into the position of Vice-Minister for the Department.
Tasked with sculpting the citizens’ relationship to their leadership, and managing the cultural
landscape, the Propaganda and Agitation Department is responsible for all the public affairs
broadcasts and news media inside North Korea. Yo-jong suddenly had control over all appointments
to the Public Guidance Bureau, the Central Broadcasting Commission, as well as her father’s old
haunt, the performing arts and film studios. She effectively controlled the vital choke-point of her
brother’s regime. Everything that was communicated as media or propaganda, had to first come
through her. Yet even further, a large degree of general government communication was also
transiting through the Propaganda and Agitation Department, leaving Yo-jong with a not-so-visible,
but essential position in defining policy and running the country. Building her brother’s cult of
personality was no easy task. Jong-un was quick to break with the traditions of his father and
grandfather, insisting on making public speeches, parading his young wife while on state visits, and
making public note of policy failures. In response, Yo-jong chose to re-augment North Korea’s media
philosophy, and began running more to-the-minute reporting, with wider latitude for individual
editors and producers to make creative decisions; and even mistakes. North Korean media was
becoming Western. Whether Yo-jong was forced to oversee the media coverage of her uncle and
aunt’s downfall is uncertain, but it had all the hallmarks of this new style.
Early that year, in January 2015, putting aside an unhealthily long (by Korean standards)
engagement, Yo-jong finally made her marriage to Choe Song official. And by some accounts, there
was a shotgun element to it all – four months later she gave birth to her first child. Her new
husband, and father of her child, an undeniable member of the Pyongyang elite, graduate of Kim Il-
sung University, and operative in the Workers’ Party of Korea, has seemingly learnt a lesson from the
execution of Uncle Jang Song-taek. If you marry into the Kim family, it is best not to make too much
of a splash. Choe Song has yet to be seen in public, in any capacity. And this has been a smart
decision, as Yo-jong herself – wrestling with the volatility that comes from organising the public life,
and image of a dictator – hasn’t been immune from potentially career-ending mistakes. Not long
after giving birth, her brother Kim Jong-un and father-in-law, Choe Ryong-hae, were at a youth rally
organised by Yo-jong. After speaking to an enthusiastic crowd of 10,000, the two men shuffled
between stage platforms to pose for photographs with different groups. The chance to be pictured
in national media with the new Supreme Leader was too much for some to handle, and the scene
quickly deteriorated into a stampede. A visibly molested Kim Jong-un, was filmed worriedly trying to
shake off the teenagers, while Choe Ryong-hae, showing his age, struggled to calm the onslaught of
love. Both men needed to be saved by a military escort forming a protective ring around them, and
crab-walking slowly away from the venue. Yo-jong was on the hook for both risking the safety of her
brother, and for allowing the pictures of the indignity to hit the newspaper stands. For the next year
and a half, she was out of favour, with the old Director Kim Ki-nam dragged out of retirement to
13
reclaim control of the Propaganda and Agitation Department, and supervise the daily work of Yo-
jong.
By 2017, through sheer resilience she had found a way to wriggle out of this hole, and even
extend beyond her previous station. Soon she was announced as only the second ever woman in
North Korean history to be appointed as an alternative member of the Politburoxiii, the country’s
highest decision-making body. She was also placed in charge of the State Security Department, as
well as regaining control over the Propaganda and Agitation Department through her position as
Vice-Minister. As recognition for the power she had gained over the North Korean state, 2017 was
also the year that the United States Treasury Department designated Yo-jong for targeted sanctions,
labelling her as someone operationally responsible for “severe human rights abuses”xiv. And it is hard
to imagine this being too far off base. In the very early years of Kim Jong-un’s rule, all the hope
internationally was that this third Kim, with his foreign education and fresh look on the world, might
be a Deng Xiaoping-type reformer. Sure, he would have to play things carefully, not moving too fast
too soon, and be vigilant not to trip over ideological traps. And importantly, he would have to deal
artfully with Songun – ‘Military First Policy’ – because a ham-fisted abandoning would tear back the
veneer of his own position, shoot turmoil through the population (particularly the military), and
likely bring the house down upon itself. So as the North Korean state under the new Kim began
picking-up from the previous generations’ rule, taunting the possibility of war, launching missiles and
deepening the nuclear program, there were plenty of people willing to give the young man a pass;
recognising that all this might be just the necessary lip-service that cements Jong-un’s position, so
that later reforms could come from a point of strength. As the years have dragged by, and as internal
repression has deepened – the growing of gulag infrastructure and the revival of old draconian
punishments for infractions, such as border crossings – this has become impossible to believe. And
all this way, Yo-jong has been by her brother’s side; building his image, implementing his policies,
and fighting for his attention.
This hasn’t always been easy. The low hanging fruit of cult-building is to make an attachment
to history. And so, Kim Jong-un would be made up to look like his grandfather; same clothes, haircut
and mannerisms. Then, his father, the man who chose Jong-un for the position would be elevated in
stature, post-mortem. New statues, myths and reporting would talk-up the dead Dear Leader, Kim
Jong-il, to the same heights of the dead Great Leader, Kim Il-sung. The message was simple, ‘if you
question the judgement of Kim Jong-un, you are also questioning the judgement of Kim Jong-il’. This
was, at least in part, the work of Yo-jong. But her hardest conjuring trick was still to come. Her
brother was likely the first North Korean leader to not fully understand the ideology of his own
country, to not understand the delicate game he needed to play. Instead of visiting schools, hospitals
and military barracks, Kim Jong-un would attend theme parks, concerts and sporting events;
complaining publically about the length of the grass, rather than the looming American ‘enemy’.
Three televised visits by the ex-basketball player, Dennis Rodman, strained Yo-jong’s abilities further.
As clearly enthralled as her brother was to meet a former sporting icon from his youth, a very
creative media spin would be needed to shadow the image of it all. Here was a black (North Korea
still identifies itself by a particularly distasteful form of racial purity) American (the national enemy),
covered in tattoos and piercings (unheard of in North Korea and a symbol of criminality), wearing
sunglasses and a hat in Kim’s presence (an incredible form of traditional disrespect), being fawned
over publically by the new leader, and joking around as if they were old friends. The very fact that
Yo-jong has managed to ride her brother’s cult of personality through these visits, says something
quite special about her abilities.
14
(Kim Yo-jong shadowing her brother through an official visit/photo-op)
Her brief purge to the outer-edge of government, forced Yo-jong to soak-in a sharp
education on survival. Increasingly, she would force herself into the same events, and party
platforms, that she was tasked with organising. And as the months ticked by, she could be seen
moving from the background of these pictures, into the edges of the front rows. Then steadily, seat-
by-seat, closer-and-closer toward her brother; toward the centre of the frame. The more public she
was, the harder it would be to remove her; or so the logic goes. She also learned to roll with the
punches of her brother’s cavalier attitude to tradition, embracing it whenever appropriate. The
more prominent she became, the more free-spirited she appeared. In October, 2017, Yo-jong
tightened another strap of her regime-life vest. At an upmarket Pyongyang cosmetic factory, Kim
Jong-un trundled around the products, sprayed deodorants, sampled creams and joked with the
nervous staff. But for once, he wasn’t the sole attraction. This was also a launching event for a new
company, state owned of course, but conceived and operated by Yo-jong and Kim Jong-un’s wife, Ri
Sol-ju. The more indispensable, and well-liked by the people around her brother, the better her
chances of survival if things ever started to turn against her. The second stage of this, was to begin
pushing out the old patriarchs, who now, by contrast to herself and brother, seemed stiff, boring and
out of place. Soon enough there was a steady stream of senior bureaucrats leaving for ‘re-education’
in labour camps. The chief of the party newspaper, Rodong Sinmun, was replaced, then when his
successor didn’t impress, Yo-jong replaced him too. Choe Hwi, Deputy-director of Yo-jong’s
Propaganda and Agitation Department disappeared, only to return once he was deemed to be
‘reformed’ and ‘repentant’. Following him out the door, was Ri Jae-il and Kim Ki-nam, the two men
who had posed with Yo-jong in that first 2009 photoshoot at Wonsan University of Agriculture; the
two men who had paved her way into the Department. Yet as both former Directors, and with Kim
Ki-nam being the person called on to replace her back in 2015, they both stood as possible
handbrakes on her power. It was clear what Yo-jong was trying to do – never again would she be
moved aside by a generational holdover.
It came slowly, but soon Yo-jong was operating with a rare independence, and even breaking
the glass ceiling of North Korean government – being photographed unaccompanied by her brother.
Her popularity was peaking at just the right moment. Always in competition with the South, the
2018 Pyeongchang Olympic Games presented an important moment for Kim Jong-un’s regime. He
would have to respond in some way – North Korea marked the 1988 Seoul Olympics by exploding a
bomb on a Korean Air passenger plane, killing 115 people – but coming after months of missile tests,
and military bluster, and with South Korean President Moon Jae-in offering a personal invitation, a
15
new opportunity appeared. Kim Jong-un quickly accepted the offer, agreed to various cultural
exchanges and good will gestures – such as both sets of athletes marching under a reunification flag,
and North Korea hosting South Korean downhill skiers – and turned to the person who he trusted
the most.
Bundled-up next to Kim Yong-nam, the Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Peoples’
Assembly, and nominal head of state, Yo-jong led a diplomatic delegation across the Demilitarized
Zone, and into the face of a fascinated foreign media. She had a dangerous diplomatic game to play.
She needed to charm the world, and earn affection from everyday South Koreans, whilst playing up
her superiority to South Korea’s closest ally and most prominent envoy, America. On February 9, she
attended the opening ceremony, seated in the same corporate box as Moon Jae-in and American
Vice-President, Mike Pence. It is hard to imagine, based on her work experience, that she was
unaware of the camera angles, and how the shot would play-out on television. She smiled at her
host and played gracious; then waiting for the camera in front of Pence to pan upward, catching her
in the background, she sneered downward at the American, with a clearly affected expression. And
that’s all it took! There couldn’t have been a more under-stated act of international diplomacy. But it
worked! The world’s media had their image, they had their story, and quite inexplicably they began
speaking of America as the clumsy, belligerent actor in the relationship. She also watched the first
game of the joint North Korean-South Korean ice hockey team (they lost, and their best players were
American ringers). But all eyes were now on South Korea’s Presidential palace, the Blue House.
Walking into the same building that her grandfather had once stormed with dozens of
commandoes in a failed assassination attempt of then-President, Park Chung-hee, was a notable
moment in itself. They ate lunch, smiled and posed for the cameras; Yo-jong then delivered an
absolute lay-up of a diplomatic coup, handing a beaming President Moon – an unreformed advocate
of the Sunshine Policy – an invitation for further talks in Pyongyang, this time with her brother. Yet
she had already exceeded the most optimistic of predictions. She had managed to touch just the
right buttons, offered nothing more upfront than her presence, yet had achieved tremendous
downstream outcomes. After a year of nuclear development, rolling missile tests, and threats of war,
North Korea had managed to steal the shine from their southern neighbours during their own
Olympic Games – then being referred to in the media as the ‘Peace Olympics’ – while also getting
them to violate the same United Nations sanctions – through refuelling their passenger ferry,
handing out Samsung cell phones to their athletes, and paying the full cost of housing, feeding and
transporting the contestants and dignitaries between events – that they had pushed so hard for only
months earlier. This was all being reported back in Pyongyang via the state news agency, KCNA, and
Yo-jong, the first member of the Kim dynasty to visit South Korea since the Korean War, was at the
centre of it all.
16
(Kim Yo-jong seated behind American Vice-President Mike Pence, at the Pyeongchang Olympics
opening ceremony)
Whether or not it was always intended this way, Yo-jong is now North Korea’s highest
ranking diplomat, and likely the second most powerful person inside North Korea, behind her
brother. When the South Korean delegation made good on their invitation and visited Pyongyang in
March 2018, she was in all the photographs, and seated prominently for the over-dinner
pleasantries/diplomacy. In a way, she had arrived. The woman, always in the background of
photographs, had fought her way to centre stage. From the indignity of her childhood exile, and
constant uncertainty of her adult life, Yo-jong is now a shadow of the marginalised figure, once
forced to line-up as just another face in a crowd of bureaucrats at her own father’s funeral. With
power beyond what her name and relationship to her brother offered, Yo-jong now has the freedom
and control to develop and execute her own policies, whilst also running North Korea’s international
affairs. It is easy to forget the human being behind it all.
More than just unfettered access to the leader of North Korea, Yo-jong could, quite
conceivably – considering some of the recent social changes inside her country – be next in line for
succession if something were to happen to her brother. As close as she is to Kim Jong-un, this must
also worry her. In her short adult life, Yo-jong has witnessed a veritable revolving door of family
members being exiled or killed for simply being in the position she is now. Her uncle, Jang Song-taek,
just like her, had built-up a huge portfolio over the years. And just like her, he had, through
international diplomatic excursions (to China), become a statesman in his own right, and someone
who foreign leaders had begun to see as an alternative centre of power; as a potential replacement
for Kim Jong-un. Her aunt, Kim Kyong-hui, was guilty by association. In February 2017, her half-
brother Kim Jong-Nam, after years of speaking to reporters, questioning the direction of his
country’s rule, and criticising the dynastic succession of Kim Jong-un, was assassinated at Kuala
Lumpur airport, in Malaysia. The killing must have been long-planned, catching Jong-Nam on a rare
trip outside the Chinese territory of Macau. The use of a highly contaminable, and media catching,
VX nerve agent as the weapon of choice, could only have been to send a message beyond the event
itself – ‘despite our denials, we unmistakably did this, and we will do it again if necessary’. Her eldest
maternal brother, Kim Jong-chol, has so far avoided such a fate only by staying in exile, occupying
himself at music festivals, and as much as possible refusing the public eye.
If none of this fills her with dread, then the memory of her own childhood, of the treatment
she received when, along with her brothers, they were seen as pretenders to the throne and not
legitimate successors, should. Yo-jong, by becoming a symbol of the regime, is playing a very
17
dangerous game. But a game in which she is so far winning – which implies something unpleasant in
itself. Clearly shaped by her environment, as we all are, Yo-jong’s new scowling image at the Olympic
opening ceremony, might be representative of something more than an act; it might hint at
something deeper, something amiss. Yo-jong’s Olympic diplomacy had handed North Korea its most
significant propaganda victory of Kim Jong-un’s rule. The little sister of the Supreme Leader had
managed to captivate the world. Alongside Songun – ‘Military First Policy’ – the prospect of Korean
reunification has always been a publically championed signal fire for the North Korean regime. As
the narrative runs, all the problems that currently afflict the peninsula, will one day be wiped away
clean by the re-merging of a divided nation. Every North Korean has been fed this diet of
propaganda since birth, and hold on to it as an undeniable truth (as do many South Koreans). On the
final stop of her Southern visit, Yo-jong attended, as Moon Jae-in’s guest of honour, a reunification
concert in Seoul. Invited down for the event, Pyongyang’s Samjiyon Orchestra were joined on stage
by members of South Korea’s K-pop band, Girls Generation, and they worked their way through a
series of traditional, emotion-drawing, nationalistic songs. Sat beside Yo-jong, her travelling partner
the octogenarian Kim Yong-nam was overcome. A lifetime of internalised propaganda, of dreaming
of reunification, was suddenly playing out through his body. Sobbing heavily, he wiped away tears,
and continued to cry uncontrollably. Yo-jong stared straight ahead, unmoved, with the same
indifferent, empty-eyed sneer that she had delivered to the American Vice-President two days
earlier.
(Kim Yo-jong at the reunification concert, next to a weeping Kim Yong-nam)
*****
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rights-abuses-idUSKBN14V2HS