Defectors: Kim Jong Un's daughter is being groomed to rule North Korea

Eight of the 11 North Korean defectors interviewed by The Associated Press believe Kim Ju Ae is being groomed to take over from her father — a view that matches South Korea's spy agency, which calls her the likely heir. The AP spoke with nearly a dozen defectors who still have contacts inside the country, plus several experts. The girl, reportedly about 13, has made dozens of public appearances since late 2022, all of them beside her father at weapons tests and military parades. State media has branded her Kim's “most beloved” and “respected” child.

Tae Yongho, a former minister at North Korea's embassy in London who defected to the South in 2016, said the way senior officials treat Kim Ju Ae at missile launch sites and factories follows protocols reserved for a successor, not a daughter. “They are repeating the same protocol and treatment they provided for Kim Jong Un,” he said, referring to Kim's years as his own father's designated heir. Kang Mi-Jin, a defector who runs a firm analyzing the North's economy, said contacts told her over smuggled phones that Kim Ju Ae is in line to succeed. Jung Gwang-il, who smuggles outside information into the country, said North Koreans he meets in Chinese border towns hold the same belief.

The three defectors who disagree point to the North's deeply patriarchal culture. Only one of the ruling Workers' Party's 17 department directors is a woman — Kim Jong Un's influential younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, according to South Korea's Unification Ministry. Kim Jeong-Ah, a former North Korean army officer who resettled in South Korea in 2009, said her contacts call it “nonsensical to revere that little girl as their supreme leader.” Lee Si-young, who heads the Seoul-based Free North Korea Radio, said some older contacts aren't happy about a woman taking power, but added that Kim family members “are like gods reigning over humans so gender really doesn't matter.”

Kim Ju Ae's identity first surfaced through Dennis Rodman, the former NBA star who held her as a baby during a 2013 trip to Pyongyang. North Korea has run three generations of Kim family rule since its founding in 1948, with no known public resistance during the two previous handoffs. Kim Jong Il took over in 1994 at 52, after two decades as official successor. Kim Jong Un was 27 in 2011 and seen by outsiders as too young, then locked down power through executions and purges, including the 2013 killing of his uncle Jang Song Thaek.

Oh Gyeong-seob, an analyst at Seoul's Korea Institute for National Unification, said hereditary succession is “institutionalized in North Korea, just like presidential elections in our system,” and that the ruling elite and ordinary citizens accept it as a matter of course. Defector Jeon Jae-hyun credits the North's pervasive surveillance apparatus with keeping discontent quiet and enforcing loyalty. Ahn Chan-il, a defector and scholar who heads the World Institute for North Korean Studies, expects citizens to passively go along with whatever Kim Jong Un decides.

Kim Jong Un, 42, is expected to name one of his children to extend the family's rule. South Korea's spy agency recently assessed that he is extremely obese and at high risk of cardiovascular disease, but shows no other signs of poor health. Kim Yumi, 32, who fled by boat with her family three years ago after pandemic regulations destroyed their fishing business, said she had never heard of Kim Ju Ae until Kim introduced her at a long-range missile launch site in November 2022. “Ordinary people know absolutely nothing about the Kim family history,” she said.