After Kim Jong-un was seen strutting his stuff in Beijing alongside Xi and Putin, there's been talk of his daughter Kim Ju Ae, who accompanied him, as being heir-apparent. I've posted before on the Daily NK's dismissal of this interpretation. Now here's another Daily NK piece on the same theme:
It would be no exaggeration to say that Kim Jong Un was the star of the military parade commemorating the 80th anniversary of Victory Day held in China on Sept. 3. He showed off the status of the North Korea-China-Russia triangular alliance, strutting with his hands clasped behind his back between Xi Jinping and Putin. He stood shoulder-to-shoulder with China and Russia on the Tiananmen rostrum, watched by the entire world. In bilateral talks with Russia, he received Putin’s highest expressions of gratitude for the recent troop deployment.
Kim Jong-un sent tens of thousands of North Korean troops to be cannon fodder in the war against Ukraine. Of course Putin's grateful. What other country would be so casual with the despatch of a generation of its young men to be slaughtered, just so that its Beloved Leader could bask in the spotlight at military parades with other leading autocrats?
Media outlets across China competed to capture footage of the special train departing from Pyongyang, and as if enjoying this attention, North Korea even disclosed through Rodong Sinmun the exact time the train crossed the border. When the train arrived in Beijing, another point of interest was the sight of Kim Ju Ae standing behind Kim Jong Un. Notably absent was Kim Jong Un’s wife Ri Sol Ju, with Kim Ju Ae taking her place. This led South Korean and international media to describe it as Kim Ju Ae’s “successor initiation ceremony.”
To conclude from the outset, I believe it is premature to judge Kim Ju Ae’s visit to China with Kim Jong Un as a successor initiation ceremony. In North Korea, where patriarchal thinking still prevails, it would be extremely difficult for a woman to assume the position of supreme leader. I have consistently emphasized that Kim Ju Ae serves as a prop for Kim Jong Un’s image politics. This is why we should focus more on “Kim Jong Un standing next to Kim Ju Ae” rather than on Kim Ju Ae herself.
The author here, one Kang Dong Wan, goes on to list five points to back his case. The main issue, though, is the one he's already raised: the extreme patriarchy of the Kim dynastic system. From my earlier post:
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.
Related to this is the question of mystique. Exposing his daughter so frequently to the public eye is largely about showing her as a symbol of the next generation, of which he's the father. But she's just a side-show. She just stands in the background: no power of her own, no mystique. There are rumoured to be three children, with an older brother and a younger brother. These – presumably the older, at least – will be kept hidden: only revealed when the time is right, as next in line in the sacred Paekdu Bloodline, and firmly in the context of power and authority – perhaps even, like his father before him, ascending holy Mt Paektu on a white horse.
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