Is Kim Jong-un's sister the most powerful person in North Korea?

Understanding of North Korea's political infrastructure remains largely opaque, yet available insights indicate that Kim Yo-jong, sister to Kim Jong-un, has emerged as a crucial figure in the political dynamics of Pyongyang. She plays a significant role within and beyond the borders of the hermit kingdom.

It is not unusual for Kim Yo-jong to use strong language when speaking on the international stage, especially when it comes to South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol and his government.

Back in November of 2022, Kim called South Korea's president and his government "faithful dogs and henchmen of the United States," after they requested new unilateral sanctions against Pyongyang, a request made in reaction to the recent ballistic missile tests carried out by their northern neighbor.

In a country like North Korea, Kim Yo Jong's words are important not only because of who she is within the country's power structure but also because of what she represents outside of her relationship with her brother.

In 2017, Kim was promoted to North Korea's Politburo, the most important decision-making body in the country. But was snubbed in 2021 when she was excluded from the executive committee of the North Korean Workers' Party.

Michael Madden, a North Korean leadership specialist at the Stimson Center, stressed at the time that regardless of what Kim Yo-jong was or wasn't included in officially, she enjoyed the greatest degree of influence over the country's policies, both foreign and domestic.

As with other members of the Kim family, there is little official information about Kim Yo-jong's life, but most experts agree that Kim's closeness with her brother probably dates back to when the two studied in Bern, Switzerland together back in the late 1990s.

Photo: Claudio Schwarz / Unsplash

According to some biographies, upon her return from Switzerland, Kim Yo-jong  studied at Kim Il-sung Military University and then went on to study computer science at Kim Il-sung University.

Photo: De (Stephan) at Flickr - https://www.flickr.com/photos/fljckr/2604020860, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9014714

According to a reconstruction of Kim Yo-jong's life published by CNN, her career in North Korean politics began in 2007 when she held minor roles within the Workers' Party of Korea.

Despite her recent fame on the world stage, Kim Yo-jong made few public appearances before 2010 and photographic evidence from that period of her life is even rarer.

This photo, taken during a conference of the Workers' Party of Korea, dates back to that year 2010. On that occasion, Kim Yo-jong's presence next to her father's alleged mistress, Kim Ok, caused some analysts to wonder if Kim Ok was Kim Yo-jong's mother.

At the end of 2014, Kim Yo-jong was appointed deputy director of North Korea's propaganda department. In holding this position, Kim helped forge a cult of personality around her brother that rivaled that of her father and grandfather.

(Pictured: A propaganda image depicting Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong-il, predecessors of Kim Jong-un)

Some analysts have wondered if Kim Yo-jong was behind her brother's visits to the country's schools and to the homes of its ordinary citizens, done in an attempt to transform the country's leader into a more accessible, and less fearful, figure.

It was also rumored that it was Kim Yo-jong who instigated the friendship between her brother and Dennis Rodman, a former NBA star. Rodman told The Guardian of him: "He's a good father and has a beautiful family."

In February 2018, Kim Yo-jong was present at the opening night of the Winter Olympics in South Korea and made headlines since she was the first of any member of the ruling dynasty to visit the South Korean country since the Korean War armistice in 1953.

Kim Yo-jong was also in charge of going to Seoul and delivering an invitation for South Korean leader Moon Jae-in to visit Pyongyang and meet with Kim Jong-un, a meeting which took place in of May 2018.

(Pictured: the historic handshake between Kim Jong-un and Moon Jae-in on that occasion)

Kim Yo-jong was sent by her brother as a government representative to the US-North Korea Summit in Singapore in 2018 and Kim met then-President Donald Trump, something that showed Kim Jong-un had come to place a lot of trust in his sister's leadership skills.

When the news of her brother's health problems (never confirmed) spread in 2020, it was assumed that Kim Yo-jong would take the reigns of government as her brother's heir.

According to some rumors, Kim Yo-jong has been in charge of the country's internal affairs during the many prolonged absences of her brother, and the British news outlet the Guardian has stated that Kim acts as a sort of "alter ego" to her brother in the regime

As for Kim Yo-jong's personal life, she is married to Choe Song, son of Choe Ryong-hae (pictured together with Russian minister Lavrov), chairman of the standing committee of the Supreme People's Assembly and a leading member of Kim Jong-un's entourage.

In short, as Leif-Eric Easley, associate professor of international studies at the Ewha University in Seoul, argued in the pages of the Guardian: "The North Korean regime is a family affair," so maybe we will see