North Korea has never named her, confirmed her age or acknowledged her as Kim Jong-un’s heir. Yet South Korea’s spy agency says the evidence is now unmistakable: his daughter Kim Ju-ae has “effectively” become the successor-in-waiting.
The assessment, delivered in a closed-door briefing to the National Assembly’s intelligence committee, was shared with journalists by Youn Kun-young of the ruling Democratic Party of Korea on Monday.
“The NIS sees Kim Ju-ae as having effectively entered the stage of being designated as successor,” he said, referring to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service.
Youn added that the agency believed Ju-ae’s increasingly frequent appearances in state media formed part of a deliberate effort to imprint “her image as a leader on the North Korean people’s minds”.
The assessment adds weight to Seoul’s view that Kim Jong-un is preparing his daughter to extend the Kim dynasty’s hereditary rule into a fourth generation.
Kim Ju-ae made her public debut in November 2022, when North Korean state media released photographs of her accompanying her father to the test launch of a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile.