[Analytics] North Korea’s first sister Kim Yo-jong lurks, hovers and steals the spotlight

The younger Kim shadowed her brother at the Hanoi summit, leading to amusement and speculation over how much power she wields. There are women who play a prominent role in Pyongyang’s ‘soft diplomacy’, but there are still deep levels of inequality in the regime, experts say. Crystal Tai specially for the South China Morning Post.

“Always close by”, “creeping in the back” and “#Fijiwatergirl” – social media users on Twitter this week were not short of descriptions for Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Dressed in a sharp black suit, with her long hair pulled back, Yo-jong, who is estimated to be in her 30s, stole some of the limelight from her brother this week when he met with United States President Donald Trump in Hanoi for denuclearisation talks.

The summit ended abruptly with no agreement reached, but during the discussions, the younger Kim provided some distraction to the media. As the leaders talked and took a stroll through the garden of the Sofitel Metropole, cameras caught her peeking out from behind a shroud of greenery, and then following behind the men.

Earlier, there were videos of Yo-jong holding what looked like a crystal ashtray for her brother to stub out his cigarette, when the delegation from North Korea took a break during their 70-hour train ride from Pyongyang to the Vietnamese border station of Dong Dang.

When Kim Jong-un disembarked from the armoured train, his sister was seen pushing past North Korean protocol chief Kim Chang-son to inspect the path ahead for her older brother.

Her hovering presence led at least one Twitter user to liken Yo-jong to the model who, armed with a tray of Fiji Water, repeatedly photobombed the red carpet at January’s Golden Globes awards.

Kim Yo Jong is the new Fiji Water Girl. pic.twitter.com/TOTw7HRqxH

— Kirsty Webeck ?️‍? (@KirstyWebeck) February 28, 2019

But more than just fodder for the Twitterati, the images highlighted the complex – if not contradictory – role the younger Kim plays. She is said to be a high-level Communist Party member but in public, behaves more like a chief-of-staff to her brother – the images of her presenting the ashtray to her brother sparked remarks that she was subservient.

Still, there are experts who believe Yo-jong wields real power.

Certain North Korean core leadership roles have typically been filled by women, said Michael Madden, a North Korea specialist and non-resident fellow at the Washington-based Stimson Centre.

“Women have always had high-level sensitive roles in the regime,” he said. “One of the things about communist countries like China, Vietnam and North Korea is that they do have a certain degree of equality of the sexes in their indoctrination.”

Yo-jong is a part of the nation’s diplomacy and likely has as much access to information as her brother does, according to Madden.

“She’s really an important figure in terms of the policy and deliberation of the country – especially in terms of geostrategic issues, her presence is emblematic of that.

“It’s very interesting when you see Yo-jong at some of these events. You see her go from somebody performing a role as a senior official of North Korea, and then performing these very menial and technical tasks for her brother,” he said.

For example, he said, she had accompanied Kim to meet with leaders such as Chinese President Xi Jinping , but at her brother’s first summit with Trump in Singapore, she pulled out her own pen so her brother could use it to sign the leaders’ joint statement.

Alongside Yo-jong, three other women were also part of Pyongyang’s delegation this week in Hanoi, with observers suggesting they were players in the hermit kingdom’s soft diplomacy push.

They were pop star Hyon Song-wol, the leader of the North’s all-female Moranbong Band whose members are picked by Kim Jong-un; senior diplomat Choe Son-hui; and high-level government official Kim Song-hye. They were also at the first summit in Singapore.

On Thursday night, Choe spoke at a hastily-arranged press conference with foreign media to explain why talks ended in disarray, while Kim Song-hye accompanied Kim Jong-un to several private meetings.

Experts and the media speculated Hyon was in Hanoi to negotiate a possible cultural exchange with the US.

“Hyon Song-wol is a very high-ranking young woman in North Korean politics,” said Madden, adding that she manages over half a dozen of the North’s performing arts groups. She was cited as a member of Kim Jong-un’s “army of beauties” during the Pyeongchang Olympics and is seen as a leader of the regime’s cultural propaganda efforts.

Yo-jong, said to be the youngest among her seven siblings, has a more understated position. She lived in Switzerland for a few years where she attended the Liebefeld-Steinhölzli public school, the same school as Kim Jong-un.

She returned home in 2000 and reportedly married the son of a high-level party member. It has been said that she always expressed an interest in playing a role in the nation’s politics – something her father, the late Kim Jong-il, was very proud of.

When she attended the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, she became the first member of the Kim dynasty to set foot in the South since the Korean war, crystallising her position among many observers as the second-most-powerful member of the North Korean regime.

“During the Olympics, people had more positive perceptions about her,” said Jang Ji-hyang, a senior political science fellow at South Korea’s Asan Institute for Policy Studies. “She dressed and acted very modestly, unlike [Kim’s wife] Ri Sol-ju, and Hyon Song-wol who wore Chanel in a very typical top-class way for a closed dictatorial regime.”

South Korean media has taken an interest in featuring Yo-jong, with several outlets describing her as a “human ashtray” earlier in the week.

For Sammy Lee, 32, a part-time radio host from Seoul, the ashtray moment made Yo-jong seem less like the “boss” or “right-hand woman” description given to her previously by South Korean media and more like a personal assistant.

“I do not want to denigrate secretaries, but she doesn’t seem like an equal figure to her brother to be honest,” Lee said.

Madden said while Yo-jong wasn’t “completely unheard [by her brother”, there were still deep levels of inequality in the regime and a gender imbalance among those in power.

The regime’s human rights abuses also include mistreatment of women, with female political prisoners attesting to military sexual violence, forced abortions and other acts of cruelty in prison.
Other critics, such as Jang, say Yo-jong plays a prominent role because of her heritage, not because of her gender. “North Korea is nothing without its highly patriarchal Kim dynasty and its hereditary succession,” she said.

“Yo-jong can do what she is doing now just because she is a member of the Kim bloodline, regardless of her gender.”

North Korea watcher Andrei Lankov, writing last May for the NK News website, said it was difficult to predict if Yo-jong would maintain her privileges. While every leader in the Kim family had relied on a sibling to be their lieutenant in the early years of their reign, “all such royal brothers and sisters have ended badly”, he said.

“They could not survive the eventual emergence of the next generation successors, that is, the children of the incumbent leader (and their own nephews),” Lankov wrote, adding that Kim Jong-un reportedly has two or three children.