An analysis has emerged that Kim Ju-ae, the daughter of North Korean State Affairs Commission Chairperson Kim Jong Un who is being mentioned as his successor, may be Kim's first child. Until now, there had been speculation that the chairperson's first child was a son.
On the 24th (local time), the U.S. nongovernmental organization (NGO) Committee for Human Rights in North Korea (HRNK) issued a report titled "The last successor? Kim Ju Ae and North Korea's hereditary succession," presenting an analysis that Kim Ju-ae may be the first child and forecasting the possibility of a transfer of power to Kim Ju-ae.
According to the report, Dennis Rodman, a former National Basketball Association (NBA) player who first revealed Kim Ju-ae's existence to the international community, is said to have said that when he met Kim Jong Un and his family in North Korea in 2013, he did not see any boy.
After visiting North Korea in September 2013 and meeting the chairperson, Rodman said in an interview with the British daily the Guardian, "I held their daughter, Ju-ae, and I also talked with Ri Sol Ju. Kim was a good father."
In April this year, when he met Park Jae-woo, the Radio Free Asia (RFA) reporter who wrote the report, and was asked, "During your 2013 visit to the North, did you see a son or any other children?" he answered, "Other family members were around, but I did not see any boy."
According to RFA's May 2023 report, Joao Micaelo, who was a classmate of the chairperson during Kim's school years in Switzerland, also said that when he visited the North in April 2013 at the chairperson's invitation, "I heard that they had a daughter, but I did not hear anything about a son."
The report said, "Based on these testimonies, questions arise as to whether Kim Jong Un actually has a son."
It also said that senior officials in the South Korean government, including the Ministry of Unification and the Korea Institute for National Unification (KINU), are raising the possibility that Kim Ju-ae is Kim Jong Un's first child, adding, "In the past, South Korea's National Intelligence Service inferred, based on an increase in imports of boys' toys into North Korea, that there would be a son born in 2010, but this is now being reexamined."
In 2017, the National Intelligence Service reported to the National Assembly Intelligence Committee that regarding Kim, the general secretary's children, there appeared to be a first son born in 2010, a second daughter in 2013, and a third child of unknown sex in 2017. The report pointed out in this regard that the claim that Ms. Ri gave birth in 2010 contradicts her frequent performance activities that year. Considering that postpartum leave in North Korea is 180 days, if Ri Sol Ju had given birth in 2010, she should have been offstage for a longer period.
However, it said, "There remains a possibility that there is a younger son (than Kim Ju-ae), but there is no confirmed information."
It continued, "The National Intelligence Service estimated the timing of the chairperson's marriage to Ri Sol Ju to be 2009, but a senior defector claimed that Ri was a college student at the time and that marriage was unlikely. There is also an estimate that Kim married Ri around 2011, when Ri disappeared from public view," adding, "Given North Korea's conservative climate, premarital pregnancy is not tolerated, which raises further questions about the theory of a son born in 2010."
First revealed publicly in Nov. 2022, Kim Ju-ae accompanied the chairperson during Kim's visit to China on the 2nd and made her debut on the diplomatic stage. This prompted speculation within North Korea that preparations may be underway for a "fourth-generation hereditary succession."