South Korean intelligence services said Friday they are analyzing a rare video showing the sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, accompanied by two children who could be hers.
In this video from North Korean state media, Kim Yo Jong, one of the country’s most influential figures, was spotted with two children, a girl and a boy, while attending performances of New Year in North Korea. We see him holding the little boy’s hand.
The isolated regime in Pyongyang has never released information about Kim Yo Jong’s family situation. South Korean intelligence services said they were verifying whether the children in the video were his.
They indicated that they had already noted in the past elements suggesting that Kim Yo Jong had children, and that those filmed in the video are of a corresponding age.
South Korea’s unification ministry told AFP it was “unusual” to see the North Korean leader’s sister with children.
Other footage released by North Korean official media shows Kim Jong Un at the same event with his teenage daughter, known as Ju Ae.
NK News, a site specializing in North Korea and based in Seoul, estimated that these images could be part of “propaganda to humanize the leaders of the regime”.
“This also corresponds to a trend, since 2022, of showing prominent leaders and those in Kim Jong Un’s close circle, going to exceptional events or making donations accompanied by their spouses and members of their family,” according to the site.
Kim Yo Jong is one of her brother’s closest spokespersons.
Born in 1988 according to the South Korean government, she is with Kim Jong Un one of the three children of Kim Jong Il, the former leader of North Korea, whom he had with his third partner, the dancer Ko Yong Hui.
She was educated in Switzerland with her brother and rose quickly through the ranks of power since Kim Jong Un inherited it after their father’s death in 2011.
In April 2015, South Korea’s intelligence agency reported that Kim Yo Jong was due to give birth the following month.
And in 2018, the same services claimed that Kim Yo Jong appeared pregnant during her visit to South Korea in February of that year for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
