North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has promoted his younger sister to a senior post in the one-party state, according to state media. Kim Yo-jong became an al
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has promoted his younger sister to a senior post in the one-party state, according to state media.
Kim Yo-jong became an alternate member of the party’s powerful Politburo, the decision-making body presided over by her brother, the official KCNA news agency said on Sunday.
The promotion was announced along with those for dozens of other top officials at a meeting of the Central Committee of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea on Saturday in the capital, Pyongyang.
The Central Committee is one of the leadership committees of the party, consisting of the politburo – the highest executive organ – as well as the secretariat.
Kim Yo-jong, according to South Korean media, is 30 years old.
Since inheriting power from his father in 2011, Kim has placed his younger sister in various positions in order to strengthen the position of the family within the country’s leadership.
She has frequently been seen accompanying her brother on his “field guidance trips” and other events and is known to have been involved in the party’s propaganda operations.
Both were born to the late former ruler Kim Jong-il and his third partner, former dancer Ko Yong-hui. The family has ruled North Korea since its creation in 1948.
Writing for Al Jazeera in February, Michael Madden, a visiting scholar at the US-Korea Institute at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies, described Kim Yo-jong as one of the North Korean leaders “closest aides”.
Like her older half-sister, Sul-song, Yo-jong was a favourite child and expressed an early interest in North Korean politics,” wrote Madden, who is also predicted that “Yo-jong will be a power player” in North Korean “for a long time to come as her career is just getting started”.
