North Korea’s Kim Jong Un Prepares Kim Ju-ae’s Succession Through Choreographed Public Appearances

North Korea’s state media and photos have increasingly shown Kim Jong Un’s daughter, Kim Ju-ae, appearing beside him in highly choreographed public settings, with multiple outlets tying her visibility and clothing to succession planning. A BBC Korean Service report says a photo published in November 2022 showed Ju Ae “strolling alongside her father in front of a towering intercontinental ballistic missile,” with her wearing “black trousers and a white padded jacket.” The BBC also quotes Sejong Institute deputy director Cheong Seong-chang saying the Propaganda and Agitation Department is likely dictating her outfits, including leather jackets that would suit “relatively rough or rugged locations” such as military bases. The same BBC piece frames her Western-designed clothing as part of a “differentiation strategy,” noting that “by wearing Western-designed clothing, Ju Ae and Ri Sol Ju are demonstrating a 'differentiation strategy'.”

South Korea’s spy agency and analysts cited by multiple outlets link Ju Ae’s rising prominence to an informal or formal succession designation. Le Parisien says “it is clearly established that Ju Ae has been 'designated as the successor' of Kim Jong Un in North Korea, according to South Korea's National Intelligence Service,” and it adds that Lim Eul-Chul argues the matching leather-jacket symbolism “is linked to the leader's image as the supreme guarantor of national security and future prosperity.” Le HuffPost similarly reports that state media published photos of Kim Jong Un and Ju Ae in matching outfits at a Pyongyang military parade, and it quotes Lim Eul-Chul telling AFP that “it is hard to see it as a coincidence” when the same symbolic outfit is worn by the daughter. The BBC also describes how Ju Ae’s fashion is used to project maturity, quoting Cheong Seong-chang that the regime dresses her in formal outfits “as a way to mask her youth and project a more mature image.”

While Ju Ae’s wardrobe is presented through state imagery, the sources also describe tightening cultural controls for ordinary North Koreans that contrast with her access to luxury and Western-style items. The BBC says that in 2020 North Korea enacted the Reactionary Ideology and Culture Rejection Act, blocking “external culture,” and it reports that in 2023 the Korean Central News Agency released a video of Ju Ae walking with her father in a black padded jacket later identified as a $1,900 purchase from Christian Dior. The BBC further states that the following year Ju Ae wore a partially see-through blouse to a completion ceremony for a residential area of the capital, Pyongyang, and that a video lecture then warned citizens such hairstyles and outfits could not be worn because they were “anti-socialist and non-socialist phenomena that blur the image of the socialist system and eat away at the regime - targets that must be eradicated.” In parallel, vijesti.me reports that a video warning described Ju Ae’s hairstyle and clothing combination as “anti-socialist and unsocialist phenomena that tarnish the image of the socialist system and undermine the regime, which must be eradicated,” citing a source close to the North Korean leadership told Radio Free Asia.