Kim Yo-jong world’s most dangerous woman, says scholar

Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, was appointed director of the General Affairs Department of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea during the Ninth Party Congress that concluded Feb. 25, North Korea’s state news agency confirmed on Feb. 28.

Her previously known official post was that of vice director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department, a post she held starting in the spring of 2014.

With much of the workings of North Korea’s party apparatus shrouded in mystery, the 38-year-old’s new official post had pundits speculating what her new role meant: Was it a demotion, or was it a promotion?

Some suggested that it was a demotion, leading a department that is tasked with overseeing the party’s internal operations and administrative affairs.

Lee Sung-yoon, principal fellow at the Seoul-based Sejong Institute, whose 2023 book, “The Sister: North Korea’s Kim Yo-jong, the Most Dangerous Woman in the World,” sheds light on the Mount Paektu Bloodline and the dynamics of the brother-sister duo that is Kim Jong-un and Kim Yo-jong, argues the question is a moot one.

“Whether this is a promotion or a demotion, it doesn’t really matter because Kim Yo-jong has been the de facto No. 2 person in the North Korean hierarchy for many years,” Lee said during an interview with The Korea Herald in Seoul on March 18.

She has been the de facto No. 2 of the North since 2012, Lee posited.

“Officially, North Korea has informed the world that Kim Yo-jong has been the vice director of a very powerful agency, the Propaganda and Agitation Department, since the spring of 2014. But, in reality, she has run that department since early 2012, high-ranking defectors tell us,” said Lee. “So, whatever her formal title may be, she has been the deputy commander, the deputy despot, next to her brother for many years.”

Kim Yo-jong has issued over 65 formal statements, some of which emphasize that her authority derives from “Comrade Chairman,” her brother Kim Jong-un, the party and the state, according to Lee. Among the statements that she has issued are several that threaten to “nuke” South Korea.

“That kind of unfettered power, access to nuclear weapons by a very powerful woman, among the nine nuclear-weapon-possessing states, we’ve never seen this before. So, I call her the most dangerous woman in the world,” Lee said.

He predicts that following her promotion from deputy director to director, Kim Yo-jong will be more assertive and take on even more roles in running the state.

Characterizing Kim Jong-un as perhaps the most successful leader in North Korean history — someone who stood rubbing shoulders with Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping at the Chinese victory parade in Beijing in September — Lee argued, “The fact that Kim Jong-un has a relatively young, acerbic, pretty sister as his deputy, this is unprecedented. And it has policy implications.”

“She is an unprecedented diplomatic weapon in the North Korean diplomatic toolkit,” he said. “How? Well, I think the prevalence of a tendency to patronize, to underestimate young, smart women on the part of many men. But, I would suggest some women as well.”

Lee pointed out that such a tendency does not work in South Korean or US interests.

“There will come a time, I believe, perhaps even sometime this year, when North Korea reverts to a postprovocation outreach. That is a peace ploy,” Lee cautioned.

He notes in his book “The Sister” a repeated pattern of provocation followed by an offer to talk, a pattern through which North Korea has been able to maximize its gains to the detriment of South Korea and the US. The failed Kim-Trump summits of 2018-2019 are glaring examples.

To many, the Kim Jong-un regime and that of his father and grandfather before him, may seem irrational. But there is a method to their madness.

“They know when to come down the ladder of escalation and put on a very sunny smile and say, ‘Let’s talk,’” Lee said. “That has been a blue-chip business model for North Korea — going on a course of relentless provocations and weapons tests and issuing threats, and then dramatically changing the tune to a much happier one, from molto agitato (very agitated) to placido (placid), and saying, ‘Let’s talk.’”

“All the big nations, including the United States, have complied and have returned to negotiations with North Korea with bigger and bigger blandishments,” Lee said.

When the time comes for another dramatic outreach, Lee believes, Kim Yo-jong will be the face of that “pleasant diplomatic outreach.”

Lee observed that her sunny disposition and pleasantries may disarm Trump, who will want to believe that his own charisma, intelligence and ability to influence her have brought about the “happy-sounding statements” she offers.

Lee warned that such a patronizing attitude is a trap. “She is the No. 2 person in arguably the world’s most despotic, inhumane regime in history. She has an agenda,” Lee said.

While Kim Yo-jong made fun of President Trump in July 2020, the North Korean government has refrained from hurling any direct insults at Trump during this term of his presidency. Lee suggested that it is a calculated move.

“I think that’s because of the three meetings between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump in 2018 and 2019, and also with the view that Kim Jong-un is amenable, at a time of his choosing, to sit down again with President Trump, probably thinking that North Korea has the most chance of wresting the biggest concessions from the US government while President Donald Trump is still in office,” said Lee.

Even after her new appointment, she continues to issue statements against South Korea and the US, including a March 10 statement carried by the Korean Central News Agency that strongly criticized the joint US-South Korea military exercise “Freedom Shield.” It was a sign that she remains North Korea’s mouthpiece-in-chief and has her hands on the regime’s policies toward South Korea and the US at the Propaganda and Agitation Department.

The department is a very powerful one, engaged in censoring and propagating the regime’s narrative through various media for both external and domestic audiences, Lee explained.

“Besides the military, it is the second most powerful and important agency in North Korea. The most important is the Organization and Guidance Department."

The longtime North Korea watcher claimed that Kim Ki-nam, who served all three North Korean supreme leaders before he died in 2024 and was the mentor to Kim Yo-jong after she came into power in early 2012, was more of a figurehead at the PAD, a department that he led from 1989 to 2017.

“She has been running that department,” Lee said, adding that Kim Yo-jong has the final say on the substance and the tone of the statements that North Korea issues. “In all of more than 60 formal written statements she has signed, there is a consistent streak of sarcasm and wit, which leads me to believe that she probably writes most of it.”

Ahead of the Ninth Party Congress, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service said that Kim Jong-un was close to designating his daughter Kim Ju-ae, believed to be 13 years old, as his heir. However, there have been no reports on the matter by North Korea’s Korean Central News Agency.

Kim Jong-un has been parading his daughter since she first appeared by his side to watch an intercontinental ballistic missile launch in November 2022. She has been seen with him at various events, including a trip last September to Beijing, where her father was meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping. Some observers saw it as her debut on the international stage.

In recent weeks, she has been pictured firing an assault rifle alongside Kim Jong-un’s favored officials and her aunt Kim Yo-jong, firing a pistol at a military plant inspection and driving North Korea’s latest armored vehicle at a military drill, her father, also on the ride, looking very pleased.

In Lee’s view, the most persuasive evidence that Kim Jong-un’s teenage daughter is being trained as the successor is the Jan. 1 visit to the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where Kim Jong-un, Ri Sol-ju and Kim Ju-ae went to pay respects to Kim Jong-un’s father and grandfather.

“It was a large entourage. And Kim Jong-un had his daughter stand dead center, where he usually stands, in the front row, bowing to the giant effigies of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il,” Lee recalled. “That is a clear message that the future is hers, that she is the future supreme leader.”

Lee also pointed out that in 2024, North Korean state media referred to Kim Jong-un and his daughter in the plural form as "great persons of guidance." The term has been used to refer to North Korean leaders and their successors.

“If Kim Jong-un, however, were to exit the political stage tonight, if he were to die or become incapacitated, who would be the de facto leader? Only one person comes to my mind, and that’s his sister,” said Lee.

Concerns regarding Kim Jong-un's health may partially explain why his daughter is being trained to lead at such a young age.

In the event of Kim Jong-un's early death, Lee predicts a Kim Yo-jong regency — the aunt becoming the de facto leader until Kim Ju-ae comes of age, perhaps in her early or mid-20s.

This is where things could take an interesting turn.

Labeling North Korea as an absolute monarchy, Lee said that throughout history, such systems have seen court intrigue and murder. North Korea is no exception.

Throughout the Kim regimes, there has been fratricide, the killing of Kim Jong-nam, Kim Jong-il’s eldest son, at the Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia in February 2017 using a chemical agent; avunculicide, executing the uncle Jang Song Thaek sometime between December 2013 and January 2014; and nepoticide, assassinating Ri Han-yeong, Kim Jong-il’s nephew who defected to South Korea in 1982 and was gunned down in February 1997.

“In that kind of system where bloodshed and backstabbing are not uncommon, I think we have to ask ourselves, ‘Will Kim Yo-jong fulfill her pledge and step aside and have her niece take the throne?’” Lee questioned.

“And as she is pondering, deciding on, wavering on that, will she remember what she and her brother did to their uncle in the winter of 2013, when they had Jang branded a traitor, had him humiliated, tortured and executed? Nobody knows. Will the wicked auntie strike first? Who knows?”