SEOUL — Since taking office in January, President Trump has expressed an interest in restarting talks with Kim Jong Un, whom he met for a series of unsuccessful denuclearization summits in 2018 and 2019.
But throwing cold water on the latest hopes of a Round 2 is none other than Kim Yo Jong, the powerful younger sister of the North Korean leader.
In a statement published by the state-run Korean Central News Agency on Tuesday, she said that a precondition for any sort of dialogue between Washington and Pyongyang was U.S. acceptance of North Korea as a nuclear state.
“Any attempt to deny the position of the DPRK as a nuclear weapons state which was established along with the existence of a powerful nuclear deterrent and fixed by the supreme law reflecting the unanimous will of all the DPRK people will be thoroughly rejected,” she said in the statement.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un speaks during a ceremony to break ground to build 10,000 homes in Pyongyang, the capital, in March 2021.
(Korean Central News Agency via Associated Press)
While adding that the personal relationship between Trump and her brother Kim was “not bad,” she warned against trying to leverage this into Pyongyang’s denuclearization, a scenario she called “a mockery of the other party.”
Here’s what to know about Kim Yo Jong, who has variously been described as Kim’s mouthpiece and a potential successor:
Born in either 1987 or 1988, Kim Yo Jong is Kim’s only sister, and one of the five children born to Kim Jong Il, who ruled North Korea from 1994 to 2011.
She is the vice director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department at the Korean Workers’ Party, as well as a member of the State Affairs Commission, North Korea’s top decision-making authority.
Little is known about her upbringing, other than the fact that she spent part of her youth in Bern, Switzerland, where she was educated alongside her brother. She later attended Kim Il Sung University in North Korea.
Since making her first major public appearance at her father’s funeral in 2011, Kim Yo Jong has quickly established herself as a key figure in her brother’s circle — a feat that none of her other siblings or half-siblings have managed.
Passed over for succession in favor of Kim Jong Un, her eldest brother Kim Jong Chul is now reportedly living a quiet life away from politics. Her half-brother Kim Jong Nam, a playboy once known for his fondness for Disneyland — and who some suggested was a CIA informant — was assassinated at an airport in Malaysia in 2017, on orders believed to have come from leader Kim.
Kim Yo Jong, who is believed to be one of the North Korean leader’s most trusted aides, with considerable influence over foreign policy, has routinely been spotted with her brother during important public events, such as those showcasing the nation’s nuclear weapons, and high-profile international trips. She was part of the North Korean delegation to the Winter Olympics in South Korea in 2018. At her brother’s summit with then-South Korean President Moon Jae-in that year, Kim Yo Jong attended as a special envoy.
North Korean youths and students march from the Pyongyang Youth Park open-air theater to Kim Il Sung Square during a protest in June 2020.
(Jon Chol Jin / Associated Press)
Since assuming her current position as vice director of the Workers’ Party’s Propaganda and Agitation Department in 2014, she has been at the front lines of North Korea’s ideological messaging, writing much of Pyongyang’s signature invective. She was blacklisted by the U.S. Treasury Department in 2017.
After moves by the U.S. and South Korea to bolster their military alliance in 2023, she called President Biden “an old man with no future” and former South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol “a hungry dog barking with the joy of getting a bone.”
Last year, in response to North Korean defectors in South Korea sending balloons filled with propaganda over the border — which prompted North Korea to retaliate with trash-filled balloons of its own — she threatened a “gruesome and dear price” for what Pyongyang has long seen as hostile acts, denouncing the defectors as “scum.”
Kim Yo Jong’s pedigree and political rise have fueled speculation that she might one day be an heir to her older brother. But with succession having been intergenerational, experts have said the more likely heir will be one of leader Kim’s children.
South Korean intelligence officials believe that Kim has three children, with the eldest and youngest being sons. Despite the fact that North Korea has always been led by men, the only child to have appeared in public is his young daughter, Kim Ju Ae, whose increasing presence at state events with her father has raised the possibility this tradition may one day be broken.
Still, the North Korean leader is believed to suffer an array of health issues related to his weight, such as high blood pressure and diabetes. Experts including Thae Young-ho, a former North Korean diplomat who defected to South Korea in 2016, say this makes Kim Yo Jong’s role all the more crucial.
In an interview with South Korean media in 2023, Thae expressed his belief that the Kim family’s grip on the country may not survive another generation, arguing that ordinary North Koreans were increasingly disillusioned by dynastic rule.
Still, he said, “if Kim Jong Un suddenly dies, the system is such that interim leadership can only pass to the No. 2, Kim Yo Jong.”
