North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter was absent as the country opened its key party congress in Pyongyang this week, prolonging ambiguity over the state’s succession plans.
The ninth congress of the ruling Workers’ Party of Korea, convened only once every five years, is North Korea’s most important political gathering and is expected to steer policy on the economy, defence, and foreign relations through the end of the decade.
Kim Ju Ae, believed to be about 13 years old, has been seen regularly by her father’s side at major military parades, weapons tests, party celebrations, and high-profile construction projects since she first entered public view in November 2022.
Her non-appearance at the congress was significant because South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) told lawmakers earlier this month that Kim Ju Ae had entered what it described as a “successor-designate stage”.
Ju Ae has increasingly been viewed as Kim’s most likely successor, particularly after a high-profile trip to China in 2025.
The South Korean spy agency briefing raised expectations that the congress might offer the clearest signal yet on Kim’s succession.
The NIS was initially sceptical that Kim Ju Ae could be chosen as a North Korean leader, owing to the country’s deeply conservative culture and male-dominated leadership dated back to its founding under Kim Il Sung, Kim Jong Un’s grandfather.
But the sheer volume of high-profile appearances she has made since then alongside the North Korean leader has shifted that assessment, and Seoul now sees them as part of an effort to build a “narrative” paving the way for the country to accept its first female leader.
North Korean state media outlets have never published her name, referring to her as Kim Jong Un’s “respected” or “most beloved” child. The belief that she is named Kim Ju Ae is based on an account by former NBA champion Dennis Rodman, in which he recalled holding Kim Jong Un’s baby daughter during a trip to Pyongyang in 2013.
The party conference opened on Thursday, with Kim Jong Un delivering a speech in Pyongyang declaring that the last five years had been a “proud period” for North Korea, since the country had achieved its goals “in all realms such as politics, the economy, national defence, culture, and diplomacy”.
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“In view of the external relations, too, the position of our state was firmly consolidated as an irreversible one, bringing about a great change in the global political landscape and in the influence on our state,” he said, according to the state-run Korean Central News Agency.
Those comments appear to reference Pyongyang’s growing ties with China, where Kim attended his first ever multilateral diplomatic talks alongside a military parade in Beijing last year, and Russia, where North Korea became the first third-party ally in the world to commit thousands of frontline troops to take part in the Russia-Ukraine war.
At least 5,000 members of the ruling party are attending the meeting, and congratulatory letters were sent from Russia, China, Vietnam, and Laos.
Kim’s regime presides over one of the most impoverished nations in the world, with more than 45 per cent of the population undernourished according to a 2023 UN report. Later data are not available due to a lack of access to a kingdom that is almost completely shut off from the outside world.
Kim blamed external factors for the challenges the country faces, citing “hostile forces [that] grew more reckless in their schemes for harsh blockades and sanctions against us”.
Natural disasters and the Covid-19 pandemic also “severely hindered the development of all our sectors, and it also seriously threatened the security of our state and the safety of our people,” he said.
On Saturday, Kim delivered to the congress a report on the work done by the party. The central committee, he said, “fulfilled its important mission and role as the vanguard of the revolution, ushering in a new era of unprecedented changes and upsurge in the scope and depth of struggle and speed of development”.
The report, according to KCNA, laid out longer-term objectives and the methods for achieving them, though specific targets were not disclosed.
The congress endorsed Kim’s report, and reportedly described it as a “revolutionary guideline” that will lead to “more rapid development, faster change, and greater progress”.
It is still possible that Kim Ju Ae could make an appearance in the latter stages of the conference, despite her father having delivered two major addresses already without her. It is not known exactly when the event will conclude, with the previous two party congresses lasting four and eight days respectively.
