Who is Kim Yo-jong, the woman poised to take over North Korea?

It’s the little things which appeared to show the closeness between brother and sister. As Kim Jong-un lit up a cigarette during a visit to China, Kim Yo-jong came up cupping a crystal ashtray in her hands. As North Korea’s leader was about to sign an agreement with Donald Trump at their much publicised Singapore summit, she quickly handed him his own pen to replace the one provided by officials.

But these seeming gestures of endearment between North Korea’s leader and his sister are said to have had another purpose. They were to ensure that the DNA of the ruling family – the semi-mythical Paektu bloodline – could not be collected by foreign governments.

These incidents were glimpses of the efforts made by the leadership of this very secret state to protect itself from all kinds of perceived threats, and also that of the role played by 32-year-old Kim Yo-jong to safeguard the dynasty.

But it is the role that Kim Yo-jong would play now – with uncertainty surrounding her 36-year-old brother amid reports that he is critically ill following heart surgery – that is getting international attention.

Kim Jong-un’s medical treatment was remarkably well documented for the leader of a country where information on most things is scarce. The operation, it is claimed, took place 12 April at the Hyangsan clinic in Myohyang, which looks after the health of the ruling family. It was carried out by the best surgeon from the Kim Man Yu Hospital in Pyongyang, who stayed to observe the recovery process for a week. The North Korean leader then went to a dacha at the Mount Kumgang resort for convalescence with 30 guards on constant watch.

Some of this was reported by Daily NK, a North Korean newspaper based in Seoul. CNN then produced a report, citing US administration sources, that surgery had indeed taken place and Kim’s condition remained critical.

According to some officials in South Korea and China, however, the rumours of Kim’s near death were much exaggerated. They had no information about a hospital stay, and claimed that he was not in the mountains of Myohyang at all, but most likely at Wonsan, beside the sea. One official said “nothing unusual” has been seen in the activities of the leader.

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The last assertion can be questioned. For the first time as head of state – or chairman of the State Affairs Commission – Kim Jong-un had failed to take part in the annual flower laying ceremony on 15 April to commemorate the birthday of his grandfather and the dynasty’s founder, Kim Il-sung, at Kumsusan Palace, one of the most venerated dates in the state’s official calendar.

Kim Il-sung died from a heart attack, as did his son and heir Kim Jong-il. Heart conditions can be hereditary, and Kim Jong-un is said to weigh around 300lbs at 5ft 7in and is a chain smoker.

Neither South Korean nor Chinese officials, it should be noted, have actually denied that he has had a heart attack. What they do say is that they have no evidence that his life is in danger. Then reports came at the weekend that a team from Beijing, including medical specialists, had travelled to North Korea. The delegation was led by a senior member of the Chinese Communist Party’s International Liaison Department, the branch which normally handles affairs with Pyongyang.

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The last public appearance of the leader was on 11 April when he took part in a meeting of the extended politburo of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea in Pyongyang. This would indicate his health deteriorated sharply as the operation was said to have been carried out the following day.

Kim Jong-un has not appeared in public since and the scenario has echoes of 2008 when there were also reports of a serious health issue. He appeared unwell when he eventually resurfaced, and evidence emerged later that he had suffered a stroke. In 2014 the leader dropped out of sight for six weeks before emerging with a cane. South Korea’s intelligence agency said he had an operation to remove a cyst from his ankle.

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Pictures from the politburo meeting showed hundreds of members sitting in close proximity, leading to claims that Kim Jong-un had suffered not a heart attack, but had been struck down by coronavirus. North Korea said it has tested 700 people for the disease and put more than 500 in quarantine. But it insisted to the World Health Organisation that it had no cases of infection.

Kim Jong-un’s older half-brother Kim Jong-nam was once seen as their father’s successor, but he fell out of favour in 2001 when caught trying to enter Japan on a false passport. He had apparently wanted to visit Tokyo Disneyland. He was killed in Malaysia in 2017, allegedly by North Korean agents. It was later alleged that he had been a CIA agent. An uncle, Jang Song-thaek, a powerful establishment figure, was arrested and executed for treason in 2013, soon after the leader came to power. Another brother, Kim Jong-chol, a talented guitar player and Eric Clapton fan, is said to have no interest in politics.

Kim Yo-jong is not perceived as an adversary by her brother. Indeed, he is said to listen to her views. And she could be the stand-in if her brother was incapacitated for a prolonged period, or, if he really is ill enough to die.

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Kim Yo-jong was recently reinstated to the politburo. This was an important comeback for her after her star had temporarily fallen due to Kim Jong-un being unsatisfied with what was gained from summits with Trump. It is said she helped persuade him to pursued detente after the two leaders had spent months hurling insults at each other, and accompanied him to the meetings in Singapore and Hanoi.

The leader’s sister has also been re-confirmed in her post of first vice director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department. Last month she made well publicised incursions back into public life, praising Trump for sending her brother a letter pledging to maintain bilateral relations and offering any help needed with coronavirus. She also attacked South Korea as a “frightened dog barking” after Seoul complained about the north resuming missile testing.

Last December, Kim Yo-jong issued her first military order, sent to the army’s all-female units. Photographs show brother and sister inspecting institutions and factories together and riding white horses at Mount Paektu, the sacred and mythical birthplace of the nation.

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Kim Yo-jong is believed to be the youngest child of Kim Jong-il, before he became leader, and his mistress Ko Yong-hui, a traditional dancer who was born to a Korean family in Japan, who moved back to North Korea when she was 10-years-old. Their two other children were Kim Jong-chol and Kim Jong-un. The leader also had another son, Kim Jong-nam, and daughter, Kim Sol-song, with two other women.

Kim Yo-jong and her direct siblings were brought up in relative isolation on the instruction, it is claimed, of their father, who did not wish them to be under the influence of their grandfather. They began their schooling at a private elementary school in Switzerland.

After returning to North Korea, Kim Yo-jong is said to have gone to Kim Il-sung Military University and then Kim Il-sung University, where she is said to have formed a friendship with Kim Eun-gyong, the daughter of Megumi Yokota, a Japanese woman who was kidnapped and taken to North Korea in 1977 at the age of 13. The Pyongyang regime later admitted to the abduction but claimed Yokota had died in captivity. The issue remains a source of dispute between the two countries.

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Kim Yo-jong became a member of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea’s junior cadre, before moving to work at the National Defence Commissions at her father’s secretariat. Her mother is reported to have died of breast cancer while at a hospital in France in 2004.

Jockeying for power began among some of the sons of Kim Jong-il after his death. Kim Yo-jong backed her brother at the time for the leadership.

She attended Kim Jong-il’s state funeral in 2011 alongside her brother and leading officials. As the new leader consolidated power, Kim Yo-jong became “one of his closest aides … managing his pubic events, itineraries, and logistical needs among other tasks”, according to the North Korea Leadership Watch blog.

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There were infrequent mentions of her after that in the state media. There is television footage of her accompanying Kim Jong-un to a military riding ground in November 2012 and the Supreme People’s Assembly in March 2014. Snippets about Kim Yo-jong’s personal life were emerging.

She was reported to have married Choe Song, the son of Choe Ryong-hae, a government official, in January 2015, but this was contradicted by South Korean government sources. She was also said to be expecting a baby in May that year, the father supposedly a ruling party apparatchik or an officer in the special military unit protecting the leader.

Despite the lack of public exposure, it was Kim Yo-jong who was rumoured to have taken over her brother’s duties during his medical absence in 2014. She had been an influential figure behind the scene, encouraging her brother’s cult of personality emulating that of their grandfather, Kim Il-sung. According to Thae Yong-ho, a diplomat who defected, she was organising all major public events by 2017.

She also encouraged her brother to present himself as a man both of his country, being photographed in hospitals, ministries and riding at fairgrounds, and one with an international reach, such as the much publicised friendship with basketball player Dennis Rodman.

Kim Yo-jong’s expanding power was coming under scrutiny abroad. The US Treasury placed her under sanctions in 2017 “in response to the regime’s ongoing and serious human rights abuses and censorship activities”. Western intelligence agencies also claim that she is a senior member of a government department which overseas illicit activities to raise foreign reserves, including counterfeiting, cybertheft, drugs and arms sales.

The sanctions did not result in Kim Yo-jong retreating back into the shadows, quite the contrary in fact. She attended the opening of the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang in South Korea, an appearance which attracted considerable media coverage. She went to a meeting with the south’s president Moon Jae-in to deliver a letter from her brother. This was followed by her very public role in two of the international events of the decade: the summits between Kim Jong-un and Donald Trump in Singapore and Hanoi.

Some analysts hold that North Korea’s deeply ingrained patriarchal and Confucian culture would not allow for a female leader. But what little we know of the life of Kim Yo-jong has shown that she has not only survived but prospered in the paranoid and violent power dynamics in the country. And, if her brother really is out of action, Kim Yo-jong may become the surprise custodian of power in the uncertain geopolitical scene which is left after the ravages of the coronavirus pandemic.