FILE – In this photo provided by the North Korean government, its leader Kim Jong Un, center, and his daughter, believed to be Kim Ju Ae, visit a military training base in North Korea, Thursday, March 19, 2026. Independent journalists were not given access to cover the event depicted in this image distributed by the North Korean government. The content of this image is as provided and cannot be independently verified.
朝鮮通信社/KCNA via KNS via AP
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朝鮮通信社/KCNA via KNS via AP
SEOUL, South Korea — Until she fled North Korea three years ago, Kim Yumi felt deeply frustrated every time state television showed leader Kim Jong Un with his young daughter. The message, she said, was clear and disturbing: North Korea was preparing the ground for a possible hereditary transfer of power, this time to Kim’s daughter.
Publicly questioning the Kim dynasty’s hold on power would mean serious persecution. Already angered by draconian pandemic regulations that ruined her family’s fishing business, she defected to South Korea by boat with her family.
“My husband and I didn’t want our children to live under a fourth-generation dictatorship. As parents, we thought the best thing we could do for our children was to give them freedom,” said Kim Yumi, 32, who now lives in Seoul.
North Korea allows no dissent and severely punishes attempts to escape the country. Established in 1948, the nation is nominally a socialist republic, but in reality it is an authoritarian dynasty, with three generations of the Kim family in power in succession. There has been no known public resistance during his two previous successions – from state founder Kim Il Sung to his son Kim Jong Il in 1994, and then from Kim Jong Il to his son Kim Jong Un in 2011.
This time, North Korea is apparently trying something drastic.
Kim Jong Un’s repeated public appearances with his daughter over the past four years have given rise to speculation that she will be seen as her father’s heir.
The question of who will become North Korea’s next leader is crucial because that person will face a huge challenge: governing a poor, nuclear-armed country whose 26 million people have little political freedom and live under strict state surveillance while being cut off from much of the outside world.
North Koreans have no say in choosing their future leader, and analysts and defectors say they will passively accept a third dynastic succession – at least publicly.
To gauge the private views of North Koreans, The Associated Press spoke with nearly a dozen defectors who still have contacts in North Korea or witnessed the country’s previous successions of power, as well as several experts.
Most defectors believe the girl is Kim’s heir
Not much is known about Kim’s daughter, except that she is believed to be around 13 years old and is named Kim Ju Ae.
Since late 2022, she has made dozens of public appearances, all with her father at major events like weapons tests and military parades. State media called her Kim’s “most beloved” and “respected” child. Her status was underlined by images showing an elderly general kneeling before her and her standing before her father.
South Korea’s intelligence agency says she is Kim’s likely heir. Eight of the 11 defectors interviewed by the AP shared this view; the others disagreed, citing the North’s deeply patriarchal culture.
“During visits to missile launch sites and factories, the way senior North Korean officials treat Kim Ju Ae involves protocols reserved for a successor, not just a daughter of Kim Jong Un,” said Tae Yongho, a former minister at the North Korean embassy in London who defected to South Korea in 2016. “They are repeating the same protocol and treatment that they reserved for Kim Jong Un,” when he accompanied his father as heir.
Tae Yongho, a former minister at the North Korean embassy in London who defected to South Korea in 2016, speaks during an interview with The Associated Press in Seoul, South Korea, Thursday, Oct. 22, 2026.
Lee Jin-man/AP
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Lee Jin-man/AP
Kang Mi-Jin, a defector who runs a company analyzing North Korea’s economy, said her contacts inside the North told her by clandestine phone call that they believed Kim Ju Ae was poised to succeed her father.
Jung Gwang-il, a defector who specializes in smuggling outside information into North Korea, said the North Koreans he meets during their visits to Chinese border towns also share the same belief.
Former NBA star Dennis Rodman was the first to reveal her identity, holding her like a baby during a trip to Pyongyang in 2013.
Doubts remain whether a woman could become leader of North Korea.
Much of the skepticism towards Kim Ju Ae as a potential leader comes from the fact that she is a woman. South Korean authorities believe she has a younger sibling whose gender has not been confirmed.
In North Korea, women remain deeply underrepresented in leadership positions. Only one of the ruling Workers’ Party’s 17 department directors is a woman. The woman is Kim Jong Un’s influential younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, according to South Korea’s Unification Ministry.
“My contacts in North Korea say it would be absurd to worship this little girl as their supreme leader,” said Kim Jeong-Ah, a former North Korean army officer resettled in South Korea in 2009.
Lee Si-young, a defector who runs the Seoul-based Free North Korea Radio, said some of her older contacts in North Korea were unhappy about a woman coming to power. But she added that members of the Kim family “are like gods ruling over humans, so gender doesn’t really matter.”
Kim’s push for hereditary transfer of power faces little resistance at home
Whether or not the girl succeeds her father, observers agree that Kim Jong Un, 42, will likely nominate one of his children to extend his family’s rule, a move they say would encounter little resistance at home. South Korea’s intelligence agency recently assessed Kim as extremely obese and at high risk of cardiovascular disease, but had no other signs of poor health.
North Koreans “will passively accept hereditary succession as something they should accept,” said Ahn Chan-il, a defector and scholar who heads the Global Institute of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
During North Korea’s first leadership transition, in 1994, the new leader, Kim Jong Il, then 52, had already spent two decades as his official successor, working alongside his father to lead the country.
The second succession, in 2011, was more uncertain. Kim Jong Un, then 27, was considered by foreigners to be too young and inexperienced. However, he quickly consolidated his grip on power by orchestrating high-profile executions and purges, including the 2013 assassination of his powerful uncle Jang Song Thaek.
“A system of hereditary succession of power has been institutionalized in North Korea, just like presidential elections in our system,” said Oh Gyeong-seob, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification in Seoul. “The North Korean ruling elite accepts it as a matter of course. So do citizens in general.”
Choi Song-juk, who fled North Korea in 2015, said she was so brainwashed that she did not complain about the North’s two previous successions of power. She now calls them “nonsense”.
Defector Jeon Jae-hyun said North Korea’s omnipresent surveillance apparatus prevents people from expressing dissatisfaction with the government and helps strengthen political loyalty.
Defector Kim Yumi said she had never heard of the girl until Kim Jong Un publicly introduced his daughter at a long-range missile launch site in November 2022.
“Ordinary people know absolutely nothing about the private life of the Kim family,” said Kim Yumi, who now runs a YouTube channel about North Korea. “They don’t really try to find out more and don’t pay attention to it because it could put them in danger.”
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