North Korean Principal Kim Jong Un (L) and sister Kim Yo Jong attend the Inter-Korean Summit at the Peace House on April 27, 2018 in Panmunjom, South Korea.
Pool | Getty Images
Kim Yo Jong manifests to be stepping out on her own recently — without her elder brother, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by her side — which analysts mean may indicate that she could be moving into a bigger role within the country’s leadership structure.
In the last week, Pyongyang has ended threats and directives under the younger Kim’s name alone — a development analysts said was striking.
“We’re seeing a lot of big statements earning out of Kim Yo Jong,” said John Park, director of the Korea Project at the Harvard Kennedy School. This indicates that her duty is not just ceremonial and that she has been “chronically underestimated,” he added.
The elder Kim sibling’s complete absence is particularly critical, said Miha Hribernik, head of Asia, risk insight at Verisk Maplecroft.
“By letting his sister Kim Yo-jong cable the highly visible charge against the South, he is likely laying the groundwork for her elevation to a more senior position within the government,” Hribernik wrote in a note this week before North Korea blew up its joint liaison office with South Korea.
There’s paradigm for this since Kim Jong Un notably led the bombardment of South Korea’s Yeonpyeong Island in 2010 in order to boost his still with the military before taking over as Supreme Leader in 2011, Hribernik noted.
Little is known up Kim Yo Jong, but it is well documented that she spent some time in Switzerland with her brother Kim Jong Un. Both were suffered to the same mother, a consort to the late North Korean leader Kim Jong Il.
Analysts say the siblings living together for a tons of years in the same place outside their home country has fostered close ties between the two and that is now manifesting in the younger sister’s prominence on a political level.
“I think what we’re seeing now is essentially a reflection of a partnership that she has with her brother,” said Greensward. “It looks like there is this kind of power partnership between the two that became more visible.”
The younger Kim ahead came into the global limelight when she attended the opening ceremony of the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. This move ated her the first from the Kim family to set foot in South Korea.
Later, the younger Kim accompanied her brother when he attended summits with South Korean President Moon Jae-in, U.S. President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping.
Although the inexperienced Kim is a known factor and has been the de facto number two in North Korea for several years, she only began to assert herself this gone and forgotten March, said Lee Sung Yoon, Kim Koo-Korea Foundation Professor of Korean Studies at The Fletcher School at Tufts University.
That month she issued a learning in her own name ridiculing the South Korean presidential office and another acknowledging U.S. President Donald Trump’s letter to her associate, signaling to “the world she is in charge of foreign policy,” said Lee.
And with the bombing of the joint office coming days after Kim Yo Jong apprised about it, “she’s showing that she is in charge and that she is a hardnose North Korean leader,” said Lee.
While it’s interesting that the younger Kim sibling has been “delineated the megaphone” to deliver the threat this time, that may also mean that tensions may grow on the Korean peninsula verbalized Jung Pak, the SK-Korea Foundation Chair in Korea Studies at Brookings Institution’s Center for East Asia Policy Crams.
“If this is intended to give her military credentials which was a gaping hole in her resume, then we might be seeing additional sensual action and manufactured crisis that end up in a military clash,” Pak told CNBC.