Kim Brought a Surprise Guest With Him to China

Speculation continues to grow that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has privately chosen his middle child as his successor after Kim Ju Ae joined her father's entourage in China—her first known international trip. It's a step up for the girl, believed to be around 12, who's accompanied Kim during his official duties around North Korea for years. Though she has not yet spoken publicly, South Korea considers her to be Kim's likely successor, and many analysts agree. She smiled as she stepped off the overnight train that brought the entourage to Beijing from Pyongyang on Tuesday, wearing a navy blue suit, the Guardian reports.

As her father rubs elbows with China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin, including at China's largest-ever military parade on Wednesday, Ju Ae "is getting valuable experience greeting and interacting with foreign leadership and other elites ... which should serve her well as North Korea's next leader or a core elite," the Stimson Center's Michael Madden, an expert on North Korea, tells the Guardian. Ju Ae is believed to have an elder brother, who would be around 15, and a younger sibling, born in 2017, but neither have appeared in public. Indeed, Kim Ju Ae is the only child "whose existence has been confirmed by the country's leadership," per the BBC.

Ju Ae—who Dennis Rodman described holding as a baby in 2013—made her public debut in November 2022, accompanying her father at the launch of an intercontinental ballistic missile. Months later, she attended a parade marking the founding anniversary of the Korean People's Army. More recently, she attended the opening of North Korea's Wonsan Kalma resort and a war anniversary event at the Russian embassy in Pyongyang in May. She has also appeared on postage stamps, per the BBC. Her status as likely successor could change, however, as North Korea remains a "deeply patriarchal state, which has never been led by a woman," the outlet notes.