The influential younger sister of North Korean ruler Kim Jong-un has become his de facto second-in-command with responsibility for relations with South Korea and the US, according to the spy agency Seoul.
In what begins to look like a sibling dictatorship, Kim Yo-jong is helping the government carry out the blessing of her brother, according to Ha Tae-keung, a South Korean MP who sits on the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee .
Ha said Kim Jong-un had handed over a degree of authority to his younger sister, who has been raised by the ruling party governments since accompanying her brother to his 2019 nuclear summit with Donald Trump in Vietnam.
“The bottom line is that Kim Jong-un still has absolute power, but a little more of his authority has been twisted compared to the past,” Ha said after a briefing through a closed door by South Korea’s national intelligence service. “Kim Yo-jong is the de facto second-in-command.”
Ha said the North Korean ruler, who has been president over nuclear and ballistic missile tests since succeeding his father in late 2011, had also delegated some decision-making powers over economic and military policy to other senior officials.
He speculated that the move was intended to ease the pressure on Kim – who has recently been the subject of rumors about his health – and enable him to avoid being blamed for possible failures.
However, he added that although Kim Yo-jong, who is thought to be in her early 30s, appeared to be pursuing policies towards Washington and Seoul, there were no signs that they were being taken for the lead that her brother was in poor health.
The South Korean report came shortly after Kim Jong-un called a rare congress of the ruling Labor Party in January to work out a new five-year plan for the economy and address “policy deficits”.
Speaking at a meeting of the party’s central committee on Wednesday, Kim acknowledged that there had been “unexpected and insurmountable challenges in various aspects and the situation in the region around the Korean Peninsula” – thought a reference to be after sanctions, the coronavirus pandemic and torrential rain that has hit the past few weeks.
On unusually early terms, the party concluded that “the goals for improving the national economy had been seriously delayed” and living standards had not been “remarkably” improved, the state-run news agency KCNA said.
In addition, nuclear talks between Pyongyang and Washington have stalled since Kim’s meeting with Trump in Hanoi in March 2019 ended without an agreement.
It is impossible to verify claims made by the spy agency of South Korea, which has a mixed record of developing interpretations in the ruling elite of North Korea.
NK News notes the absence of Kim Yo-jong from several recent high-level meetings, such as a plenary session of the ruling party on Wednesday, prompting speculation that she may have been demoted.
However, there is evidence of their rise to prominence within the dynastic regime. In March, she made her first public statement, condemning the South as a “scared dog barking” after Seoul protested against a military exercise of live fire by North Korea.
She also publicly praised Trump for sending her brother a letter in which he said he hoped to maintain good bilateral relations and offered help in dealing with the coronavirus pandemic.
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