North Korean Defectors Say Kim Jong Un's Daughter Being Groomed as Heir

North Korean defectors now living in South Korea say they believe leader Kim Jong Un is preparing his young daughter to eventually succeed him, viewing her frequent public appearances alongside her father as a sign of an emerging fourth-generation hereditary transfer of power.

Kim Yumi, a 32-year-old defector who fled by boat with her family three years ago and now lives in Seoul, said state television coverage of the leader with his daughter left her feeling that Pyongyang was laying the groundwork for another dynastic succession. She cited strict pandemic-era restrictions that damaged her family's fishing business as a further reason for leaving.

North Korea, founded in 1948, is nominally a socialist republic but in practice functions as an authoritarian dynasty, with three generations of the Kim family having ruled in succession. The country permits no dissent and harshly punishes attempts to flee, and there was no known public resistance during the previous two transitions of power.

Because North Koreans have no say in choosing their future leader, analysts and defectors expect that any third dynastic succession would be accepted passively, at least in public. The identity of the next leader matters greatly, as that person would govern an impoverished, nuclear-armed nation of about 26 million people living under strict state surveillance and largely cut off from the outside world.

To gauge private sentiment inside the country, the Associated Press spoke with nearly a dozen defectors who retain contacts in North Korea or who witnessed earlier power successions, along with several experts. Their accounts suggest that public displays of the leader's daughter are being read as a deliberate signal about the future of the Kim dynasty.