[INTERVIEW] 'North Korean leader's younger sister is ambitious, bossy'

Kim Yo-Jong, the younger sister of North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un, attends a wreath-laying ceremony at Ho Chi Minh Mausoleum in Hanoi, Vietnam, in this March 2019 file photo. Reuters-Yonhap

Author of 'The Sister' says Kim Yo-jong will succeed Kim Jong-un to become the supreme leader of North Korea, in case her brother is incapacitated

By Kang Hyun-kyung

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's younger sister, Kim Yo-jong, is back in the media spotlight following her explosively critical speech rejecting President Yoon Suk-yeol's new initiative ― largely referred to as his "audacious initiative" ― a proposal calling for the denuclearization of North Korea in exchange for large-scale food, energy, infrastructural, technological and financial assistance.

Calling it "the height of stupidity," Kim said in a statement released on Aug. 19 that Yoon's offer delivered in his Aug. 15 Liberation Day speech is as absurd as "trying to dry the dark blue ocean and turn it into a mulberry field." She then revealed her visceral dislike of South Korea's Yoon "as a human being," rebuking South Koreans for having elected him recently as their president.

Sung-Yoon Lee's book, titled, "The Sister," will be published by Pan Macmillan on June 15, 2023.

Sung-Yoon Lee, the Kim Koo-Korea Foundation professor in Korean Studies and assistant professor at The Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy of Tufts University near Boston, said that Kim Yo-jong has been more visible and empowered to speak on behalf of her brother since 2020.

"She is Kim Jong-un's most trusted aide, adviser, deputy, spokesperson, attack dog and confidante," he said in a recent email interview with The Korea Times. "In their body language when they are in close proximity, I see genuine mutual trust and affection. She is not a mere 'secretary.'"

He said now is the time for the world to pay greater attention to the ambitious younger Kim because of her growing influence in her country.

Her multiple crucial roles in the North ― as the deputy director of the Workers' Party's Publicity and Information Department, alternate member of the Politburo and member of the State Affairs Commission, among others ― have convinced Lee to believe that Kim Yo-jong could lead the country in case her brother is incapacitated for any reason.

If this happens, he said, Kim Yo-jong will succeed her brother to become the supreme leader of the impoverished state because she is the only adult who is part of the Mount Paektu bloodline, which refers to the three-generation lineage of North Korea's leadership, descending from founder Kim Il-sung. "There is no doubt that Yo-jong is leadership material," said Lee.

Kim Jong-un is believed to have children, although no further details about them are known, but they are too young to become leaders, said Lee.

He ruled out Kim Jong-un's brother Jong-chol from the possible successor list.

"Kim Jong-chol has stayed out of public view since Jong-un ascended to the throne in the wake of their father's death in December 2011. Jong-chol has long been known to harbor no interest in politics, whereas Yo-jong has been known since her childhood to be ambitious and bossy," he said. "More importantly, Yo-jong has participated very visibly in policymaking at least since February 2018 when she visited South Korea as her brother's special envoy."

Lee, an expert on North Korea's leadership, is the author of the new book, "The Sister," which unravels the rise of Kim Yo-jong. The book will be published on June 15 next year.
"I do reveal a few facts of policy relevance in my book," he said.

Lee declined to share any future details of his incoming book, saying he is contractually bound not to reveal them until two or three weeks before the publication date.

He said that Kim Yo-jong's "worse cop" role helps her brother, Kim Jong-un, be viewed as a more restrained and reasonable person.

"In the pandemic era, she has been a 'co-crime boss' with her brother, often playing, ironically the role of the 'worse cop' to her brother's 'bad cop,' rendering her murderous brother as the more restrained and reasonable person," he said. "It's quite clever, for when she reverts to the kind of charm offensive the world saw during their visit to South Korea, and in her meetings with then South Korean leader Moon Jae-in thereafter, much of the world will wish to see in her glimmers of hope, peace and reconciliation. By virtue of her gender and youth, she casts a softer, feminine glow on the cold, brutish facade that is her nation, the DPRK. Or that's how her interlocutors will see her. The latent sexism in her adversaries works to her regime's advantage."

North Korea is well-known for its fiery, erratic and offensive statements, in which they have ridiculed several world leaders with undiplomatic characterizations. It called former President Park Geun-hye a "dirty old prostitute," former U.S. President Barack Obama a "wicked black monkey" and Australian judge Michael Kirby, the chairman of the U.N. Commission of Inquiry report on human rights in North Korea who is openly gay, a "lecherous homosexual."

South Korea's former President Moon Jae-in, who had tried to dialogue with the North all throughout his five-year tenure in the presidency and had been criticized by conservative South Korean politicians for his "excessive" concessions he made to the North, was not an exception. In March 2020, the North likened Moon to a "frightened dog barking" after South Korea described the North's live-fire military exercise as a provocation.

Lee said that Kim Yo-jong signed off on all these invectives against the leaders. "All these nasty attacks bear the same mean streak and sardonic wit of Kim Yo-jong's recent statements under her own name," he said.

Sung-Yoon Lee, the Kim Koo-Korea Foundation professor in Korean Studies and assistant professor at Tufts University's Fletcher School / Courtesy of Sung-Yoon Lee