Kim Jong Un and his daughter Kim Ju Ae at a military parade in Pyongyang. North Korean state media has increasingly placed her front and centre at major events.
Kim Jong Un has never been what you would call a conventional father figure. This is a man who runs the world’s most isolated dictatorship, has tested ballistic missiles for fun, and reportedly had his own uncle executed at a party meeting. Not exactly your average school run kind of dad.
And yet here we are in 2026, watching the Supreme Leader of North Korea take his teenage daughter everywhere. To missile launches. To military parades. To Beijing for a summit with Xi Jinping. To the Russian Embassy for Victory Day celebrations. To a warship launch. To a coastal resort opening. The girl is racking up more air miles and state appearances than most heads of government.
Her name is believed to be Kim Ju Ae, though even that is unconfirmed. North Korea being North Korea, her birth date, her real name and virtually everything else about her remain state secrets. What we do know comes largely from South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, the occasional state media photograph and the unlikely source of former NBA player Dennis Rodman, who claims he held baby Ju Ae during a 2013 visit to Pyongyang and described Kim as “a good dad” and “an awesome guy.”[1] Geopolitics has a way of producing truly surreal moments.
Kim Ju Ae made her first public appearance alongside Kim Jong Un at an ICBM test launch in November 2022. Most daughters get taken to school plays. She got a ballistic missile.
She first appeared publicly in November 2022, standing in a white coat holding her father’s hand at the test launch of a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile.[2] Most daughters get taken to school plays. She got an ICBM. Since then the appearances have kept coming, and the language North Korean state media uses to describe her has been quietly but unmistakably escalating. She started out as Kim’s “beloved” and “precious” daughter. She is now referred to as “respected,” a title typically reserved for the most senior figures in North Korean society, including Kim himself.[1] In March 2024 she was officially called “a great person of guidance.” The propaganda machinery does not accidentally hand out titles like that to teenagers.
So who exactly is this girl, and why her? Kim is believed to have three children with his wife Ri Sol Ju, but neither of the other two have ever been seen in public and their existence has never been formally confirmed by the North Korean state.[2] Ju Ae is believed to be the second child, born around 2012 or 2013. South Korea’s NIS has reported she is home-schooled in Pyongyang, with interests including horseback riding, skiing and swimming.[3] Her actual curriculum almost certainly includes a heavy diet of statecraft, military protocol and the art of standing on a podium looking appropriately authoritative.
Then there is the wardrobe, which deserves its own paragraph. At some events she turns up in Gucci sunglasses and Cartier watches. At others she mirrors her father’s look entirely, right down to matching leather jackets and dark glasses.[4] Think about what that actually means. North Korea is one of the most impoverished countries on earth, where an estimated 42% of the population is undernourished according to the UN. And yet Kim Jong Un’s designated heir is being dressed in Western luxury brands at state functions, in a country where owning foreign media can get you executed. This is not a fashion choice. It is a signal to the elite that this girl belongs at the very top, wrapped in the kind of wealth that only the Kim family can flaunt without consequence. As Professor Lim Eul-chul of Kyungnam University told NBC News: “When his young daughter is wearing the same symbolic attire, it’s hard to see it as a coincidence. It is more likely to be a deliberate move to tell the North Korean public that Kim Ju Ae is her father’s heir.”[5]
The decision to choose her over a son, if there is one, is remarkable for a country as deeply patriarchal as North Korea. This is a society shaped by centuries of Confucian tradition where political authority has always flowed through men. North Korea has never had a female leader. Neither, for that matter, has South Korea. The resistance to a woman at the top is not just cultural preference. It is baked into the institutions, the military hierarchy and the expectations of every senior official who would eventually need to accept her authority. South Korean officials said for years it was “premature” to even consider Ju Ae a serious succession candidate and the NIS itself took until 2024 to formally shift its position.[6] What Kim appears to be doing is running a years-long preemptive campaign against that resistance, normalising her presence in elite consciousness so that by the time the question becomes official the answer already feels inevitable.
There is one person whose role in all of this gets far less attention than it deserves. Kim Yo Jong, Kim’s younger sister, is arguably the second most powerful person in North Korea right now. She has been the regime’s most ferocious public attack dog for years, issuing threats against South Korea and the United States in language that makes her brother sound almost reasonable by comparison. She is smart, ruthless and deeply embedded in every part of the system. If Kim Jong Un were to die before Ju Ae reaches adulthood and builds any kind of real institutional standing, Kim Yo Jong would almost certainly step in before a teenager with no formal title could take the throne, not because she is technically next in line but because she has the power base, the experience and the credibility that Ju Ae simply does not yet have.[6] Whether Kim Yo Jong eventually steps aside gracefully for her niece or becomes a rival is one of the most genuinely unresolved and fascinating questions in this whole story.
Kim Jong Un brought Kim Ju Ae to Beijing in September 2025 for China’s Victory Day parade, her first official international appearance. North Korean succession tradition holds that heirs are presented to China as a sign of readiness.
The international debut came in September 2025 when Kim brought Ju Ae to Beijing for China’s Victory Day military parade, her first ever appearance on foreign soil. Analysts were not subtle about what this meant. “When North Korea finalises their successor process, they are used to bringing this successor to China,” said Park Won-gon, professor of North Korean Studies at Ewha Womans University. “Showing them is kind of their tradition.”[7] Kim Jong Il, Kim’s own father, was brought to Beijing as part of his succession grooming decades earlier. History in North Korea is a very reliable playbook. By early 2026, South Korea’s NIS was telling lawmakers that Ju Ae had completed her successor training and been formally designated as her father’s heir.[8]
None of this is guaranteed of course. Ju Ae has no official party title. No military rank. She is still a teenager. But the direction of travel is pretty hard to argue with. A matching leather jacket at a military parade. A front row seat at a warship launch. A trip to Tiananmen Square flanked by Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin. Her father letting her get in the car before him. State media quietly upgrading her honorifics every few months. This is not a man taking his daughter to work for fun. This is a calculated, methodical, years-long project to hand one of the world’s most dangerous countries to a girl who was still in primary school when it started.
Kim Jong Un may be many things. But right now, more than anything else, he is very deliberately the world’s most consequential girl dad.
Sources
Wikipedia. “Kim Ju Ae.” Updated April 2026.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Ju_Ae
Time, April 2026. “What We Know About Kim Jong Un’s Teenage Daughter and Possible Heir.”
time.com/article/2026/04/06/kim-jong-un-daughter-kim-ju-ae-north-korea-heir
NBC News, September 2025. “Kim Jong Un’s daughter and likely heir Kim Ju Ae joins him at China parade.”
nbcnews.com/world/north-korea/kim-jong-un-daughter-kim-ju-ae-china-parade-succession
France 24, September 2025. “Who is Kim Ju Ae? North Korean leader’s daughter makes global debut on China trip.”
france24.com/en/asia-pacific/20250903-who-is-kim-ju-ae
NBC News, February 2026. “Kim Jong Un fuels succession buzz with daughter’s matching leather jacket.”
nbcnews.com/world/asia/north-korea-kim-jong-un-party-congress-daughter-ju-ae-successor-jacket
Lowy Institute, March 2026. “North Korea: Is Kim’s daughter the chosen successor?”
lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/north-korea-kim-s-daughter-chosen-successor
CBS News, September 2025. “North Korea’s Kim Jong Un debuts daughter and potential successor to the world.”
cbsnews.com/news/kim-jong-un-daughter-potential-successor-north-korea-china
NPR, February 2026. “Kim Jong Un’s daughter close to being designated future leader, says spy agency.”
npr.org/2026/02/12/g-s1-109778/kim-jong-uns-daughter-close-to-being-designated-future-leader
