Mick Hartley

From the Times:

Kim Jong-un has delivered an impassioned speech extolling the virtues of his country’s women despite what he described as their “weakness”, “plain faces” and “wrinkles”.

In an address delivered on International Women’s Day, Kim urged female citizens to “fulfil the sacred mission and duty … in achieving the prosperity and development of our country and promoting the harmony and unity of our society”.

“Though physically weak, they are obviously strong-willed, their plain faces assuming courage and the wrinkles on them denoting their strenuous exertion and thus arousing much greater respect,” he said. “So, they look incomparably beautiful, and I think this is a charm unique to our Korean women.”

Dripping with patronising condescension. As you’d expect. And yet:

His teenage daughter, Kim Ju-ae, is being groomed as his successor, according to South Korean intelligence assessments.

They keep pushing this, but it seems such obvious nonsense to me. The whole basis of the Kim dynasty is patriarchal. The appearance of his daughter at events is simply a way of emphasising Kim Jong-un’s fatherly devotion – extended, by implication, to all his people. The daughter is a figure in the Kim iconography, not a leader in waiting.

From the Daily NK in December 2023:

Upon being told that some analysts in South Korea believe that Kim Ju Ae will be the successor to her father, a high-ranking source in North Korea told Daily NK on Nov. 11 that “I don’t understand why they say that. If you let a woman take power in the fourth generation, the last name of the fifth-generation leader will be different. That doesn’t make sense. When you name a successor, you think of the future. Succession is establishing the fourth generation to serve as a basis for the fifth generation.”

In short, the source argued that Kim Ju Ae’s descendants would have a family name other than Kim, a family name associated with the country’s so-called Paekdu Bloodline, and that this would make a fifth generation succession impossible to achieve. The source’s argument puts on display the power of patriarchal beliefs in North Korean society; namely, that children must take their father’s last name and only sons may become successors to keep familial lines going.

In fact, some analysts say that North Korea’s leadership is not putting Kim Ju Ae on display at major events to establish her as successor but rather as part of a strategy to intensify idolization of her father. 

“The North Korean leadership hasn’t finished bolstering Kim Jong Un’s unitary leadership system,” an expert at a South Korean policy think tank told Daily NK, speaking on condition of anonymity. “North Korea’s leadership is focusing on intensifying efforts to idolize Kim Jong Un, not establishing a succession. Even during the recent Fifth National Conference of Mothers, the propaganda focused on highlighting [Kim Jong Un’s] image as a loving father of the Socialist Grand Family.” 

In fact, after that conference ended, Rodong Sinmun focused on promoting Kim’s image as a wise, warm father, writing, “Everyone cried and cried again, saying there were no other hardworking fathers of the people like our Supreme Leader [Kim Jong Un].”

There is, it’s presumed, a son. In time he’ll be presented, but they’re keeping him under wraps for the moment: keeping the mystique. He’s being trained up: probably past the pulling-wings-off-insects stage by now, on to the drowning cats. Hardening him for the tasks ahead. But Dad is still young – though perhaps not in the best health given his obesity – and there’s a long way to go yet.