SEOUL – The star of the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un rose so high and high in the country’s ruling sky in 2020 that it made her appear as a replacement for her older brother, if not her rival for power.
At 32, four years younger than Jong Un, Kim Yo Jong made his presence known through shockingly harsh statements that he had to endorse, but she clearly wrote and recommended.
Undoubtedly, his most famous – and most effective – explosion was the June denunciation of North Korean defectors for firing South Korean balloons loaded with pamphlets criticizing the North Korean regime.
They were “human scum that was hardly worth their value as human beings”, “little less than wild animals that betrayed their own homeland”, she was furious. It was “time to take their owners to the account” and ask the “South (sic) Korean authorities if they are ready to take care of the consequences of the misbehavior of stray dogs that have no qualms about slandering us while blaming the ‘nuclear issue’ in the cruelest way at the most inopportune time. ”
Kim Yo Jong’s colorful rhetoric – more extreme than anything his brother has publicly put on since taking over the reins after the death of his father, Kim Jong Il, nine years ago – played a sensitive chord here. South Korea’s national assembly, dominated by President Moon Jae-in’s ruling party, made it illegal this month to launch not only brochures, but also chocolate bars, dollar bills and USB devices bringing traces of good life to the south from the demilitarized zone to the North plagued by hunger and poverty.
Moon himself adopted a “turn the other cheek” policy after North Korean soldiers on June 16, at the behest of Kim Yo Jong, through the army, blew up the joint liaison office at the closed Kaesong Industrial Complex north of the DMZ . The explosion, heard from miles away, showed that she meant it when she warned South Koreans to “prepare” for the “closure” of the office “whose existence only adds to the problems”.
Kim Yo Jong’s harsh criticisms were even more disappointing for Moon, considering that just a day before the explosion, on the 20th anniversary of the signing of a joint North-South agreement in Pyongyang between Kim Jong Il and the late President of South Korea Kim Dae Jung, he asked both sides “to move forward, one step at a time, on the path of national reconciliation, peace and reunification”.
After Kim Yo Jong called his conciliatory words “a series of shameless and impudent words full of inconsistency” and “shameless perfidy”, Moon left it to a spokesman to call his criticism “an insensitive act that fundamentally damages confidence “supposedly built in his four meetings with Kim Jong Un.
The fact that Kim Yo Jong violates this trust so easily means that it is more than just a power behind the throne. As a widely recognized head of the fearsome Organization and Guidance Department, a mysterious agency that watches everything that is happening in the government, the ruling party and the upper echelons of the army, she has the authority to impose penalties ranging from exile to minor positions in camp, to prison and death.
His exact title is OGD’s first deputy director, said Lee Sung-yoon, a professor at Tuft University’s Fletcher School, “but his blue blood replaces formal titles.” Lee, who is writing a book about her, said “she is in fact number 2 in the North Korean (North Korean) hierarchy and the only confidant of importance to Kim Jong Un”.
As if that alone was not enough, it is believed that she is also the first deputy director of the United Front Department. The title, Lee said, may not seem all-powerful, but the meaning is clear: “By the authority granted by her brother Kim Jong Un, the Party and the State, she will proceed to punish South Korea, which she has designated as a ‘ enemy. ‘”
Kim Yo Jong obviously could not have reached such heights if she were not Kim Jong Il’s daughter, but she showed remarkable charm, wit and strength in getting around other family members.
Another brother, Kim Yong Chol, who is three or four years older than Kim Jong Un, would have been dismissed by his father as “too effeminate” to be a suitable heir for any position. Photographed for several years watching Eric Clapton’s shows in Singapore and London, he is known for being an avid guitarist. Inside the tightly closed doors of one or more of the complexes of the ruling family, he is probably strumming – undamaged and without threat.
And there was the older half-brother, Kim Jong Nam, born to Kim Jong Il’s first lover, discarded by his father as too much a playboy to be his heir and relegated to exile in Macau. Still seeing him as dangerous, Kim Jong Un, in 2017, caused him to be massacred, literally, by two young masseuses, when he was about to fly back to Macau from the Malaysian capital, Kuala Lumpur. North Korean saboteurs paid poor women in Indonesia and Vietnam to wipe their face with a liquid that turned out to be a VX chemical agent that killed him in minutes.
Was Kim Yo Jong – possibly too cunning for his own sake – risking a similar fate? Despite her best efforts, she cannot help but raise concerns that her older brother will sooner or later decide that he is fed up with her and isolate or even get rid of her, as he did with other members of his own family .
Kim Jong Un “would not like outside media to characterize him as potentially dead or dying and his sister as a possible replacement,” said Bruce Bennett, a Korea expert at Rand. “It could undermine your position within North Korea.” Still, “she may have acted strongly in North Korea”, dealing with internal issues, while her brother works to “regain the focus of external media for himself”.
So, how will she manage to ascend to star power in the North Korean leadership galaxy without so far getting into trouble with her brother?
If Jong Un is not so happy to see Yo Jong talking about a strong force, he still needs it. With over 300 pounds in his 5-foot, 7-inch body, he is battling undisclosed illnesses that can range from diabetes to heart disease. It is speculated that he contracted, who knows, a touch of COVID-19 – enough to keep him out of sight for long periods.
The little sister also stayed out of the spotlight for weeks, adding to the impression of repression. Growing in importance, she knows how to keep her head down. A safe way to disappear would be to undermine a paranoid character who does not support real competition, but is not always physically up to the job.
President Moon’s special adviser on foreign affairs, Moon Chung-in, had the rare opportunity to see Kim Yo Jong in person at two summit meetings with his brother in Pyongyang. She was “humble in appearance,” Moon told the Daily Beast. “She was very polite … She didn’t speak much.”
It didn’t matter that his position with his brother seemed like positive proof of his upward trajectory in the hierarchy. A strong supporter of accommodation with the North, Moon does not agree that her presence at such vital meetings is evidence of her dramatic rise.
“In North Korea there is only one leader,” said Moon, a retired professor who courts influential Americans and organizes conferences in support of President Moon’s soft-line approach. “It was a driving force in improving relations between North Korea and South Korea, but the term ‘second in power’ is a distortion.”
Evans Revere, a former US Embassy diplomat here, understands the game he is playing. “Kim Jong Un evidently does not see it as a threat,” he said. “She was careful not to overshadow KJU and cultivated the image of someone who is clearly subordinate to him.”
Yo Jong must have had a strong background role for some time before making his international debut at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in Korea in February 2018, watching the opening ceremony in the VIP box behind Vice President Mike Pence and then receiving an invitation from his big brother to President Moon to meet.
The image during the Olympics was that of an educated and zealous mediator, but earlier this year, after she was appointed deputy to the Workers’ Party Politburo, of which her brother is clearly president, she actually started acting in public.
Abandoning all pretensions of politeness, she denounced the Moon government in Seoul for frowning over North Korean missile launches, saying that “such a gangster-like statement can never be expected from those with a normal way of thinking.” No, she was careful not to refer to Moon by name, but said that Casa Azul, the presidential residence and office complex, was behaving in a “perfectly silly” manner. The response from Moon’s inner circle, she scoffed, was like “a child afraid of fire.”
More recently, she showed her public face again, saying she would “never forget” how South Korea’s Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha said North Korea’s allegations of no COVID-19 cases were “hard to believe”. Kang, she warned sternly, “may have to pay dearly” for speaking such words.
Kim Yo Jong’s greatest success, however, has been to get Moon and the majority of his party’s national assembly to shut down balloonists in the face of criticism among political opponents here, as well as human rights activists abroad, even with the popularity of Moon falling below 40 percent.
Foreign Minister Kang in an interview with CNN defended the anti-balloon law as justified in a “highly militarily tense area where everything can go wrong, lead to even greater confrontations”, but John Sifton, Asia’s defense director for Human Rights Watch in New York, called this “a great disservice” to the people of both Koreas. South Korea, he said, “seems more interested in keeping Kim Jong Un happy than letting its own citizens exercise their basic rights on behalf of its northern neighbors.”
The real test of Kim Yo Jong’s influence may come when dealing with the next Biden government. She once “ruled out the likelihood or need for greater dialogue between the United States and North Korea,” recalled Bruce Klingner, an Asia expert at the Heritage Foundation, but “left the door open if Washington capitulated to Pyongyang’s demands” .
Leaving formal titles aside, she is “probably the second most powerful person in North Korea” – the one her brother “trusts most”, said Klingner. Whether she “would become a leader if her brother died suddenly, remains unknown, but that is certainly a much stronger possibility than just a few years ago.”