North Korean state media reported on Saturday that dictator Kim Jong-un attended the launch of a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) in the company of his wife Ri Sol-ju and their “beloved daughter,” who has not previously been photographed or mentioned by the tightly-controlled media of the Communist tyranny.
According to South Korean media reports, Kim and Ri were married in 2009 and have three children, the oldest of which would now be 12 years old. After one of his “diplomatic missions” to North Korea in 2013, eccentric former basketball star Dennis Rodman said he saw Kim’s baby daughter, whom he named “Ju-ae.”
North Korea’s KCNA “news agency” and state newspaper Rodong Sinmun published photos on Saturday of Kim walking beside a preteen girl wearing a white jacket and red shoes, with the new ICBM visible in the background. It was the first time Kim’s regime has officially confirmed the existence of his daughter. Her name and age were not mentioned in the report.
This photo provided on Nov. 19, 2022, by the North Korean government shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, left, and his daughter inspect what it says a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile at Pyongyang International Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, Friday, Nov. 18, 2022. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
Analysts struggled to guess the secretive North Korean regime’s motives for debuting Kim’s daughter.
The Washington Post speculated it was a calculated move to soften Kim’s image and give the relatively young, but chronically unhealthy, dictator some credibility as a “leader and father,” although Take Your Daughter to Work Day does not usually involve intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Other observers wondered if Kim debuted his “beloved” daughter to send signals about the line of succession in Pyongyang, or to emphasize that North Korea’s nuclear weapons program is permanent. Until now, the children of North Korea’s dictators have been kept under wraps until they were formally introduced as successors to the throne. Rolling his daughter out early might have been intended as a signal to both global audiences and schemers in Pyongyang that the Kim dynasty will continue.
“By showing his daughter next to the ICBM, [Kim] is announcing to the world and his people that DPRK will never give up its nuclear program and it will be carried on throughout his lineage,” South Korean lawmaker Tae Yong-ho, a defector from North Korea, told the Washington Post. DPRK stands for Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the North Korean government’s preferred name for itself.
This photo provided on Nov. 19, 2022, by the North Korean government shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, right, and his daughter inspects a missile at Pyongyang International Airport in Pyongyang, North Korea, Friday, Nov. 18, 2022. North Korea’s state media said its leader Kim oversaw the launch of the Hwasong-17 missile, a day after its neighbors said they had detected the launch of an ICBM potentially capable of reaching the continental U.S. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified. Korean language watermark on image as provided by source reads: “KCNA” which is the abbreviation for Korean Central News Agency. (Korean Central News Agency/Korea News Service via AP)
Tae added that Kim might have been responding to growing international calls for China to do more to control his increasingly belligerent regime, by demonstrating that the next generation of North Korean leaders is ready and willing to continue the drive for nuclear missile technology.
As for the ICBM, KCNA identified it as a Hwasong-17, a gigantic missile that would represent North Korea’s next step toward delivering nuclear warheads with global reach. The United States, South Korea, and numerous other Western and Asian nations immediately condemned its test launch on Friday as a violation of United Nations resolutions.
“This action demonstrates the need for all countries to fully implement DPRK-related UN Security Council resolutions that are intended to prohibit the DPRK from acquiring the technologies and materials needed to carry out these destabilizing tests,” said State Department spokesman Ned Price.