The North Korean dictator takes advantage of the test of a Hwasong-17 that could reach the United States to show his possible heir, who is 12 or 13 years old
With syrupy photos in glossy magazines, the official introductions of the royal heirs are often held in luxurious palaces with the parents decked out in their best clothes. But in North Korea, which has become the only communist dynasty and is already in its third generation, there is no gossip and all life is focused on a single aspect: the military. With that tradition as a flag, it is not surprising that its young dictator, Kim Jong-un, has presented his daughter in society at the launch of his last intercontinental missile, a Hwasong-17 that on Friday flew almost a thousand kilometers in 69 minutes. . As the projectile reached a maximum height of 6,040 kilometers above Earth before re-entering the atmosphere and falling into the international waters of the Sea of Japan, called the East in Korea, analysts believe it could travel up to 15,000 kilometers and theoretically hit American soil with the three to five heads it could carry.
To celebrate such an important “achievement”, Kim Jong-un took his daughter to the missile launch. As revealed by the state news agency KCNA on Saturday, the dictator witnessed this ballistic test “together with his beloved wife and daughter”, which is the first public appearance of his heiress. In the photos distributed by the KCNA, the girl, who is believed to be 12 or 13 years old, accompanies her father holding his hand as he inspects the gigantic missile, carried by an eleven-wheeled mobile shuttle. Wearing a white coat, black pants and red shoes, she also accompanies him on the platform from which Kim Jong-un watched the test with his wife and other generals. With a chubby face, she looks more like her father than her mother, who appears in the photos of her wearing an army green jacket that rounds out her figure and makes her lose the charm of years ago.
Since former NBA star Dennis Rodman, a friend of the dictator, revealed it in 2013, it was already known that Kim and his wife, Ri sol-ju, had a daughter named Ju-ae or Chu-ae. In addition, it is assumed that they have another girl and a boy, born in 2013 and 2017. But this first public appearance, and in an act as important to the regime as a ballistic test, points to her confirmation as heiress, since North Korean propaganda it is extremely jealous of the relatives of its leaders and only shows images of them if there is a political intention behind it.
As this correspondent was able to verify on his first trip to North Korea in 2006, the population did not even know that its then dictator, the “Dear Leader” Kim Jong-il, had children. They discovered it on September 28, 2010, when the youngest of the three boys, Kim Jong-un, was named general during a Workers’ Party Congress and, a few days later, presided over a military parade with his father, who already by then he was ill and was beginning to prepare his succession. Similarly, it was not known who Kim Jong-un’s wife was until the summer of 2012, eight months after taking over from her father, who died in December 2011, and after official mourning had passed.
With such hermetic and belated precedents, what many experts are now wondering is why the dictator has presented his daughter in public just now. Although she is only a girl and he is still quite young, since she is supposed to be around 38 years old, there are suspicions about her poor health due to her overweight and her alleged love of alcohol and tobacco. “It indicates his confidence in the lineage of Mount Paektu and the success of his missile, emphasizing the importance of national security,” the president of the University of North Korean Studies, Yang Moo-jin, explained to the South Korean news agency Yonhap, referring to the sacred mountain of this lineage, deified by propaganda.
Regardless of speculation about his health, the dictator shows the world the new generation of the Kim dynasty, the base of this communist regime that remains closed to the outside world and spends millions on weapons while its people barely survive. Or it is also possible that, like any other father, Kim Jong-un prides himself on teaching his daughter what he does best: fire missiles with which to terrorize the planet.
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