Evaluation-In male-dominated North Korea, management prospects of Kim Jong Un’s daughter are unsure By Reuters

By Josh Smith

SEOUL (Reuters) -Though the surprising look of North Korean chief Kim Jong Un’s daughter raised hypothesis that she might be a successor within the making, analysts say it could be an unprecedented uphill battle within the male-dominated dynasty.

Every change on the high in North Korea has raised the prospect of a management vacuum or collapse of the Kim dynasty, which has dominated the nation since its founding in 1948.

Kim Jong Un’s daughter – who was not named in state media – appeared in protection of a ballistic missile launch on Saturday, watching the firing and holding her father’s hand as he examined the missile. This offered the primary official affirmation that Kim has kids, and underscored a message that the household is right here to remain, analysts mentioned.

They cautioned that it’s far too early to inform whether or not she is a successor or just an emblem used to guarantee residents that nuclear weapons would shield kids and be “monuments to be handed right down to our descendants for generations,” as state media reported.

Chun Su-jin, the South Korean writer of a ebook on North Korean ladies leaders, mentioned the prospect of North Korean elites welcoming Kim’s daughter as ruler is near zero.

“It’s not able to welcome a pacesetter of the opposite gender,” she mentioned. “(Kim) is simply staging a present that he’s a loving father, not only a brutal dictator who shoots missiles.”

Others argue that regardless of North Korea’s deeply patriarchal society, gender might not disqualify a daughter or different lady from taking the reins.

Barring a sudden well being drawback that results in his incapacitation or dying, there’s a truthful period of time earlier than Kim, believed to be almost 40, wants to contemplate a successor, mentioned Michael Madden, director of North Korea Management Watch.

“That offers ample time for North Korea’s political tradition to vary and create the circumstances for a feminine successor,” Madden mentioned.

WOMEN LEADERS

Kim has elevated a number of highly effective ladies round him, together with his sister, Yo Jong, and Choe Son Hui, the nation’s first lady overseas minister.

“Kim Jong Un belongs to a distinct technology than his grandfather and his father, and in some methods, he seems extra receptive to vary than his forefathers,” mentioned Rachel Minyoung Lee of the 38 North analysis organisation.

In line with Yonhap information company, South Korean intelligence officers imagine the lady seen on Friday is a daughter recognized as Ju Ae by former American basketball participant Dennis Rodman, who frolicked with Kim’s household in 2013. She can be about 12-13 years outdated, and is one in every of an estimated three kids of Kim Jong Un, Madden mentioned.

If Kim has any sons, they might nonetheless have a bonus to proceed the male-centric “Mt. Paektu bloodline,” Lee mentioned, referring to a volcano on the Chinese language border that performs a central position within the ruling celebration’s mythology.

Girls have held senior roles in North Korea through the years, however Kim Jong Il handed over a number of older daughters and sons to anoint Kim Jong Un, regardless of hypothesis on the time that his second daughter might be his successor, Madden famous.

The elevated participation of North Korean ladies in elite politics doesn’t essentially point out change to the broader social or political techniques, 38 North mentioned in a 2020 report.

North Korea is deeply remoted from world geopolitics and is underneath UN sanctions for its weapons programmes, which embrace nuclear bombs.

In line with human rights activists, sexual and gender-based violence stays “endemic”, and COVID-19 border lockdowns and restrictions on beforehand rising market economies have been significantly laborious on the ladies, who made up a lot of that workforce.

“In North Korea, gender remains to be vital to be a pacesetter,” mentioned Hyun In-ae, a North Korean defector who now works on the Ewha Institute of Unification Research in Seoul.

PATH TO LEADERSHIP

When rumours and hypothesis arose in 2020 about Kim Jong Un’s well being, his sister was seen a attainable placeholder to take over the household dynasty till one in every of Kim’s kids was sufficiently old.

Believed to be in her early 30s, Kim Yo Jong is the chief’s solely shut relative with a public position in politics, spearheading a brand new, more durable marketing campaign to place stress on South Korea and in some instances working as a “de facto” second in command, in accordance with South Korean intelligence.

Based mostly on earlier leaders, any kids will want training and on the job expertise earlier than they are often thought-about for supreme management, and in about 10 years we will anticipate her to have begun an official profession, Madden mentioned.

If, over the subsequent decade, Kim’s daughter turns into intently related to financial growth and the missile and nuclear weapons programmes, then the North Korean political and army equipment might place her because the promising subsequent technology of the Paektu line, mentioned Darcie Draudt of the Princeton Faculty of Public and Worldwide Affairs.

“Backside line: the bloodline, and army and financial growth bona fides, matter greater than gender within the fourth technology of the Kim Dynasty,” she mentioned.