North Korean leader Kim Jong Un promoted his younger sister to a top political post Saturday, according to state media, prompting an air of intrigue about the new Kim in Pyongyang.
Faced with international sanctions and the potential threat of armed confrontation with the U.S., the dictator consolidated his political power at a key meeting of the country’s ruling party over the weekend.
On Saturday, the isolated regime’s leader — who was nicknamed “little rocket man” by U.S. President Donald Trump — announced several personnel changes at a meeting of the Central Committee of the governing Workers’ Party, the KCNA news agency reported.
However, it was the decision to appoint Kim Yo Jong — Kim Jong Un’s sister — as a member of the regime’s Political Bureau that stirred the most curiosity.
Kim Yo Jong was rarely seen in public before 2010, when she was pictured in attendance at a Korean Workers’ party conference. Although, it was arguably her appointment as deputy director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the country’s ruling party in 2014 that significantly boosted her national profile.
Believed to be in her late twenties, Kim Yo Jong has frequently accompanied her brother on various “field guidance trips” as well as to other political events. She has operated in a number of political roles in the one-party state and her latest promotion appears to have been made in order to strengthen the position of Kim Jong Un’s family within the regime’s leadership.
Liker her brother, Kim Yo Jong also studied in Switzerland, reportedly attending the International School of Berne. She is then believed to have studied computer science at Kim Il-sung University in North Korea.
Kim Yo Jong and Kim Jong Un both have the same mother — Ko Yang Hui, a former dancer born in Japan who was a partner of Kim Jong Il, who died in 2011.
The U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted Kim Yo Jong in January, alongside six other North Korean individuals, for supporting human rights abuses as well as other censorship activities in the isolated state.
In recent years, some immediate family members who might have been deemed threatening to the regime have been killed.
Kim Jong Un’s half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, who had publicly spoken out against the Kim family’s dynastic control, was assassinated at Kuala Lumpur International Airport in Malaysia last year, while the ruler’s uncle, Jang Song Thaek, was executed in 2013.
The communist Workers’ Party is North Korea’s primary political faction and has been in power since the state’s creation in 1948.
—CNBC’s Nyshka Chandran contributed to this report.
Source: cnbc china
Everything you need to know about Kim Jong Un’s sister