Kim Yo Jong: What We Know About Kim Jong Un’s Sister and Her Role in North Korea

Kim Yo Jong, believed to be at least 34 years old, is a senior North Korean official helping oversee the country’s policies toward the U.S. and South Korea, according to Seoul’s intelligence agency, which has referred to her as the country’s de facto No. 2 leader.

Among her various titles, Kim is the nominal head of the North’s propaganda and agitation department. She rose to prominence in just the past several years, attending all three face-to-face meetings between then-President Donald Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, as the latter’s confidante and adviser. In September 2021, she was promoted to the State Affairs Commission, the North’s top decision-making body. More recently, she issues state-media attacks against the U.S., South Korea and others who doubt the Kim regime.

Who is Kim Yo Jong and what do we know about her?

Kim Yo Jong’s precise date of birth is unknown, though South Korea’s Unification Ministry database of North Korean officials lists her as being born in 1988 in Pyongyang. She is the younger sister of Kim Jong Un and the youngest-known daughter of their father Kim Jong Il, who ruled North Korea from 1994 to 2011 and had children with several women. During her earliest years, Ms. Kim was an obscure figure. That changed in 2009, when Kim Jong Un was rumored to have been named heir to the North Korean leadership, after their father suffered a series of strokes. That year, a side-by-side photograph was shown on state media, showing a presumed image of her, alongside Kim Jong Un and their eldest full brother, Kim Jong Chol. News cameras also spotted her in early 2011, when she attended an Eric Clapton concert in Singapore with Jong Chol.

Her marital status is unknown, though some South Korean news outlets have mentioned she may have married the son of a prominent North Korean official, Choe Ryong Hae, Kim Jong Un’s deputy in the state affairs commission—the government’s most-powerful decision-making apparatus. She hasn’t been publicly seen with a husband in North Korean state media. Kim steadily gained international prominence as Kim Jong Un accelerated North Korea’s nuclear weapons development over the past decade, participating in nuclear negotiations involving the U.S. and South Korea since 2018. In 2020, when her brother was rumored to be seriously ill, North Korea experts mentioned her as a possible emergency backup, if her brother abruptly died, or was incapacitated.

She boasts a key requirement to become the North’s Supreme Leader: she hails from the “Mount Paektu bloodline,” or those with a direct lineage to the country’s founder Kim Il Sung.

What is her political role in North Korea?

Ms. Kim has held an official post in the North Korean government since at least 2014, according to the Seoul government, serving in the country’s rubber-stamp parliament. She also serves in the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party, the party’s executive body. In 2018, she received international attention when she traveled to South Korea as her brother’s emissary, to discuss how North Korea could participate in that year’s Winter Olympics, which was hosted in Pyeongchang, South Korea. She later appeared at the Games’ opening ceremony seated near then-Vice President Mike Pence. She became the first known member of North Korea’s ruling Kim family to visit the South.

Ms. Kim then traveled to Singapore, Vietnam and the inter-Korean border to attend unprecedentedface-to-face meetings between her brother and Mr. Trump, as a confidante and adviser to her brother.

In March 2020, a North Korean government statement under her name was released for the first time. That statement rebuked South Korea for criticizing a recent military exercise conducted by the Kim regime days before. She has since become the North’s go-to figure to talk publicly about U.S. and South Korean affairs.

Since then, Kim Yo Jong has warned the Biden administration of “causing a stink,” protested combined Washington-Seoul military exercises and ridiculed South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol’s attempts at rapprochement.

Is she next in line to succeed Kim Jong Un?

There are no publicly known rules that precisely outline North Korea’s leadership succession. But in the two successions that have occurred in the country since its founding in 1948, the incumbent leader has handpicked and groomed an adult son to succeed him upon his death.

Kim could be a temporary regent who would inherit North Korea’s leadership, should the incumbent Kim Jong Un abruptly die, or fall seriously ill, according to longtime North Korea watchers. In April 2020, amid widespread speculation that her brother could be incapacitated or dead, Kim Yo Jong was seen as a potential backup. That was due to her blood ties to the ruling Kim family, the fact that all of Kim Jong Un’s children were under 18, and because other male members of the Kim family were seen as politically sidelined. In August that year, Seoul’s intelligence agency said Ms. Kim was Pyongyang’s de facto No. 2, though she may not be an officially designated heir.

What is her relationship with Kim Jong Un?

Kim Yo Jong is likely the only adviser that Kim Jong Un trusts, North Korea experts say, due to their shared blood and her unimposing presence.

Kim has often appeared to help her brother stand out, instead of competing for power or public attention. She is portrayed in North Korean state media as accompanying her brother during official visits to the country’s factories, farmlands, and government offices in a deputy role, quietly offering advice and assistance, and with a notebook in hand. Her younger age is also seen as an asset in winning the North Korean leader’s confidence, North Korea experts say, as age is a determining factor in seniority in Korean culture.

Kim was rumored to have been demoted after the Hanoi summit in February 2019 failed to produce a denuclearization deal. But she was reinstated to the country’s Politburo and attended many of her brother’s showcase events—including in May 2020 when Kim Jong Un reappeared at a factory opening after the world speculated he might be dead.

In November 2022, Kim was shown crying in celebration of the country’s Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile launch, a marquee North Korean event. Kim Jong Un was photographed holding hands with his daughter—and Kim’s niece—in what was the first public appearance from one of the North Korean leader’s children.

Her relationship with her elder brother is compared with that between their father Kim Jong Il, and his younger sister, Kim Kyong Hui, who was the North Korean ruler’s sole surviving full sibling. Those two shared a tragic past: their mother died during childbirth when both were children, while another brother died in a drowning accident a year earlier. Kim Kyong Hui had helped her brother’s rule by overseeing parts of the country’s communist economy and serving as an adviser. But as aunt to Kim Jong Un after he rose to power, her public life had remained sidelined, while her husband, Jang Song Thaek, was purged and believed executed in 2013. Kim Kyong Hui was photographed as recently as January 2020, attending a concert in Pyongyang with Kim Jong Un.

How is Kim Yo Jong perceived by North Koreans?

It is impossible to accurately gauge her standing among the overall North Korean public, due to the authoritarian government’s ability to execute citizens who even slightly criticize the Kim regime. But the public is likely to be unaccustomed to having a young woman in a senior government position, as the great majority of those in such roles in North Korea have been older males. Her relationship with her brother Kim Jong Un, though, means she can demand respect—real or feigned—from the North Korean elite, who mostly live in the capital city of Pyongyang. In 2018, an 89-year-old Kim Yong Nam —North Korea’s then-nominal head of state, as the chief of the country’s rubber-stamp legislature—bowed in deference to Kim when the two led a North Korean delegation to South Korea, in front of South Korean news cameras.

How is she perceived abroad?

She has been seen as an influential North Korean aide to the country’s leader due to her relationship with Kim Jong Un and participation in major diplomatic meetings with the U.S., China and South Korea. Her harsh rhetoric directed toward senior South Korean officials in 2020—including President Moon Jae -in—was seen as unusual by Seoul officials, as they had shared private conversations and drinks with Kim in recent inter-Korean meetings. Most remembered her as soft-spoken and polite.

In the U.S., she was sometimes perceived to be an unofficial counterpart to Ivanka Trump, who had served as an adviser to her father and accompanied him on diplomatic engagements with North Korea. The two also crossed paths in the 2018 Winter Olympics. Kim attended the opening ceremony as the unofficial head of the North Korean delegation, while Trump attended the closing ceremony as the leader of the U.S. delegation.

Kim has also been seen as a complicit violator of human rights by human rights organizations and the U.S. government. Her senior role in North Korea makes her partly responsible for the Kim regime’s continued executions, incarcerations and oppression of political prisoners, they say. Her role in a government propaganda department also links her to the Kim regime’s censorship activities, the Treasury Department said in January 2017, when it added her to its sanctions list.

Write to Timothy W. Martin at [email protected]