NEW YORK (Monitoring Desk) – North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has taken his little-known daughter on his most important foreign trip in years — a visit to China aimed at breaking Pyongyang’s isolation and strengthening ties with Beijing and Moscow.
The girl, widely believed to be Kim Ju Ae, around 12 or 13, has increasingly become a fixture at high-profile state events since 2022, sparking speculation that she is being groomed as her father’s successor. Though North Korean state media have only referred to her as “beloved” and “respected,” Ju Ae’s identity is assumed based on former NBA star Dennis Rodman’s 2013 account of meeting Kim’s baby daughter during a trip to Pyongyang.
South Korean intelligence believes Ju Ae was born in 2013 and that Kim Jong Un and his wife Ri Sol Ju have at least two other children — an older son and a younger, unidentified child.
At the Beijing event, Ju Ae appeared in a navy pantsuit styled like her mother’s outfits, standing among senior North Korean officials, but she did not join her father when he later appeared alongside Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin at a massive military parade in Tiananmen Square.
Kim first introduced his daughter to the world in November 2022 during an intercontinental ballistic missile test, where she appeared in a white coat and red shoes, walking hand-in-hand with her father. Since then, she has attended missile launches, parades, naval ceremonies, and even cultural and economic events such as the opening of a beach resort.
Her expanded role has led analysts — and South Korea’s National Intelligence Service — to carefully assess her as Kim Jong Un’s most likely successor, though the agency notes that he is still young at 41, healthy, and has other children.
Skeptics point to North Korea’s male-dominated power structure and Confucian traditions as obstacles to a female heir, but Ju Ae’s rising profile, capped by her first foreign trip, has intensified global speculation over the future of the Kim dynasty.
