SEOUL: North Korean state media on Saturday (Mar 16) referred to leader Kim Jong Un’s teenage daughter as a “great person of guidance”, employing a term usually reserved for senior leaders and hinting at her status as a potential successor, analysts said.
Both the English- and Korean-language versions of an official Korean Central News Agency report on Kim and his daughter’s visit to a greenhouse farm used the plural form of the honorific, suggesting it applied to both of them.
“The great persons of guidance, together with cadres of the Party, the government and the military, went round the farm,” read the English-language report, which ran with images of the pair.
Analysts said it was the first time Kim’s daughter – never named by Pyongyang’s state media, but identified as Ju Ae by South Korean intelligence – had been described as such by the North.
“This is the first expression of elevating Kim Ju Ae to the ranks of” a leader, Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told AFP.
The North Korean term “hyangdo” – meaning guidance – is typically only reserved for “top leaders or successors” of the isolated regime, said Cheong Seong-chang, director of Center for Korean Peninsula Strategy at the Sejong Institute.
“This level of personal worship for Kim Ju Ae strongly suggests that she will succeed Kim Jong Un as the next leader of North Korea,” Cheong added.
