Kim Jong Un’s Teen Daughter Now Directs North Korea’s Missile Tests: Report

SEOUL — The daughter of North Korea leader Kim Jong Un now has the power to press the button on missile tests, according to intelligence reports cited by South Korea’s biggest-selling newspaper, Chosun Ilbo. The paper quotes “government high-ranking sources” as saying that Mr. Kim has bestowed the title of “missile-general director” on the girl, believed to have been born in 2013 or 2012, making her 13 or 14.Chosun Ilbo, reporting the “exclusive” story while Mr. Kim presides over the ninth party congress of the North’s ruling Worker’s Party in Pyongyang, cites the same sources as saying her given name is “Ju-hae,” not Ju-ae,” as the basketball player Dennis Rodman called her after holding her in his arms as Mr. Kim hosted him in Pyongyang in 2013.The latest report deepens the mystery as to her status in the North Korean hierarchy. North Korean state propaganda organs, while showing dozens of pictures of her with her father at missile launches, ceremonies and other events, have never mentioned her by name. Mr. Kim has delighted in showing her off as she’s grown from pre-teen to teenager, but she has yet to appear before the 5,000 delegates gathered for the first party congress in five years,It’s at that august forum that South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, dedicated to focusing on North Korea, has predicted she’ll be officially named Mr. Kim’s successor. Since the congress opened several days ago, however, there’s been no official sign of her and her destiny in the North Korean ruling hierarchy.Adding to the confusion, Chosun Ilbo reported that a prominent North Korean defector, Ryu Hyun-woo, who made it to the South in 2019 from his post as acting ambassador to Kuwait, has insisted her father did indeed name her Ju-ae, meaning “main love, “to express his wish for her to be ‘a beloved daughter cherished by many.’” Then too, the paper said, her real name may be more like “Ju-ye” or “Ju-jye,”But why does North Korea leave the girl’s name shrouded in mystery when her image has appeared regularly in the state press after she was first photographed with her father watching a missile launch in 2022? Just last week, she and he were shown on a new series of stamps standing arm in arm against the background of a Hwasong-17 intercontinental missile on a launch pad.Her image at the missile site may well have been intended to fortify her standing as “missile-general director,” but would she really have authority over the man who now fills that position? Mr. Kim’s daughter “receives reports from generals and issues directives,” said Chosun Ilbo, reporting the South’s National Intelligence Service as telling National Assembly members, “Circumstances have been detected where (the daughter) provides opinions on some policies.”As speculation grows in the South about Ju-ae, or Ju-hae, Kim Jong-un was again elected, unanimously, of course, as party general secretary. The director of the party’s “propaganda and agitation department,” Ri Il-hwan, did not mince words, crediting “The great Comrade Kim Jong Un” with advancing “the idea on building a comprehensively developed socialist state and the principles and strategies for political, economic, military and cultural construction to carry it into practice. “Beneath the rhetoric came the news that Mr. Kim had shaken up the party’s top leadership, getting rid of the man who had been “the symbolic second in power,” Choe Ryong-hae, and a raft of others, according to Chosun Ilbo.“Kim Jong-un, who gained confidence through actions like dispatching troops to Russia, has opened the ‘Kim Jong-un era’ by surrounding himself with loyalists ,” said Chosun Ilbo, while “preparing the path for his daughter, who has entered the ‘designated succession’ phase.”

Kim Jong Un’s Teen Daughter Now Directs North Korea’s Missile Tests: Report

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