North Korea marks 75 years of Kim dynasty rule

When Kim Jong Un steps out onto the balcony of the Grand People's Study House in Pyongyang on Saturday to greet the crowd and mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of North Korea, much attention will be focused on the people around him. 

China and Russia have both confirmed that representatives of their governments will attend the celebrations and the scheduled military parade.

But even more interesting for North Korea analysts would be the presence or the absence of Kim Ju Ae, the North Korean leader's 11-year-old daughter.  

 

Kim Ju Ae first appeared in public at a missile launch in November 2022. Since then, she has accompanied her father on many occasions.  

She is believed to be the second of Kim's three children. While much of Kim Jong Un's home life is shrouded in secrecy, South Korean intelligence stated that his first child is a boy — a major advantage for a potential ruler of a male-dominated society.

And yet, Kim Ju Ae seems to be her father's favorite. It has been suggested that she is being groomed to one day take over as the head of the communist country.

Three generations in power

Previous rulers of North Korea, Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il, also introduced their successors in public to ensure their clan remains in control. But both of them passed the power to their sons.

Kim Il Sung took power with the support of the Soviet Union in 1945 after colonial power Japan had been defeated and pushed out of the Korean Peninsula. He became premier of North Korea when the nation was established in 1948.

Kim built his legitimacy as the ruler of the fledgling nation based on his guerilla activities against the Japanese, although it is widely accepted that state-run propaganda vastly exaggerated his resistance activities.  

He ordered his troops to invade the US-backed South Korea in 1950. China ultimately intervened to save the North from defeat at the hands of a coalition of United Nations member states led by the US. The fighting ended three years later in a stalemate that has left the peninsula divided ever since.  

And while the North was initially more developed and wealthier than the South, in large part because it had large mineral deposits, plentiful supplies of energy and trading partners in China and Russia, economic mismanagement under Kim quickly saw the South eclipse the North and become one of Asia's economic powerhouses.  

Kim Il Sung died of a heart attack at the age of 82 on July 7, 1994, and the leadership passed to his oldest son, Kim Jong Il. 

Millions killed by famine

According to the official record, Kim Jong Il was born in 1942 beneath a rare double rainbow in a cabin used by resistance fighters on the slopes of sacred Mount Paektu. More prosaic Soviet accounts say he was born in a displaced persons camp in eastern Russia in 1941.  

After taking power in the mid-1990s, he had to face a crisis of his father's making, a widespread famine brought on by chronic mismanagement of the nation's agriculture.

This was compounded by the loss of economic assistance from Russia and a series of natural disasters that ruined crops. Some estimate that the famine, referred to as "The Arduous March" in the isolated country, claimed 3.5 million lives.

But the regime's tight control over education and the media made sure that the widespread distress never morphed into an uprising. The crisis was finally overcome in 1998.  

Kim Jong Il also ordered the North's first nuclear test in October 2006 and informed the world that the country had nuclear weapons in its arsenal.  

In the coming years, rumors started circulating about the leader's poor health. He was allegedly suffering from diabetes, gout and other illnesses brought on by his appetite for expensive foreign food and alcohol. He died of a heart attack aboard his official train on December 17, 2011.  

Oldest sons ruled out of top position 

Unusually, his successor was named as Kim Jong Un, his third son. Kim Jong Il's oldest son, Kim Jong Nam, enraged his father when he was caught trying to enter Japan on a forged Dominican Republic passport so he could visit Disneyland.

His second son, Kim Jong Chul, is reported to have no interest in leading the nation. He is rumored to lead something of a playboy lifestyle, including being spotted at an Eric Clapton concert in London in 2015. 

But the current leader, Kim Jong Un, seems to be keen on following in his father's and grandfather's footsteps. Like them, he is also promoting his own cult of personality, oppressing his rivals and opponents, and expanding the country's arsenal, which now includes nuclear weapons.

In late 2013, he accused his uncle and mentor, Jang Song Thaek, of treason and had him summarily executed, along with five members of his immediate family.

Western analysts also show little doubt that he was behind the assassination of his half-brother Kim Jong Nam at the Kuala Lumpur airport in February 2017.  

Now believed to be 42 years old, Kim Jong Un also had to face challenges from abroad, such as international sanctions and the increasingly close alliance between South Korea and the US.

Park Young-ja, senior research fellow at the Seoul-based Korea Institute for National Unification, told DW this is why the strongman is taking his daughter alongside him on public appearances.

"He is putting her in the spotlight to encourage the ordinary people and reduce their anxiety about the future of the regime," she said. The researcher also said it was not inconceivable that the 11-year-old might be a future North Korean leader. 

North Korea a 'male-oriented, Confucianist country'

Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor of international relations at Tokyo's Waseda University, and an expert on the Kim dynasty, has a different perspective. He told DW that Kim Ju Ae cannot inherit the leadership of North Korea.  

"She will not be his successor and she has no official position or power," he said. "I do not even think that she will appear at Saturday's anniversary event because this is not a modern, advanced society and there is still opposition to a female leader."

"It might be difficult for outsiders to understand, but this is a deeply male-oriented, Confucianist country and culture," he said. "The Yi dynasty lasted more than 500 years and the Koryo kings were on the throne for 400 years, so the 75 years of the Kim dynasty is nothing and to Korean people it makes complete sense that the king passes his kingdom on to his son."

Shigemura noted that Kim's reputation might be harmed by economic failures and the return of widespread hunger in the North.

However, "internal cohesion and durability are high" and there are no obvious challengers waiting to take advantage of a misstep. And only in his early 40s, Kim Jong Un has time to identify and elevate his replacement. 

Edited by: Darko Janjevic