The 9-year-old daughter of North Korean strongman Kim Jong Un made one other public appearance, fueling recent speculation concerning the Hermit Kingdom’s line of succession.
Ju Ae, one among three children Kim is believed to have, has now popped up twice in every week next to her dad after living in relative obscurity contained in the isolated Asian nation.
State media’s description of Ju Ae because the dictator’s “most beloved” or “precious” child has some experts pondering she would be the heir apparent to the dominion.
“That is actually striking,” Ankit Panda, a North Korean expert with the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told PBS News Hour.
“The photograph of Kim Ju Ae standing alongside her father while being celebrated by technicians and scientists involved in the most recent ICBM launch would support the concept that that is the beginning of her being positioned as a possible successor,” Panda said.
“State media underscoring her father’s love for her further underscores this, I believe,” he said. “Finally, each of her public appearances have been within the context of strategic nuclear weapons — the crown jewels of North Korea’s national defense capabilities.
“That doesn’t strike me as coincidental,” Panda added.
The teenager’s latest appearance got here as she was photographed next to her father with a bunch of scientists and technicians believed to be working on North Korea’s Hwasong-17 missile, Kim’s most up-to-date nuclear obsession, PBS reported.
The photographs were published Sunday by the Korean Central News Agency, the country’s state-controlled media outlet.
Last weekend, the cheeky girl was unveiled to many of the outside world walking hand-in-hand along with her father at a nuclear missile testing site.
Kim’s private life has largely remained clouded in secrecy outside the country, with experts believing the dictator and his wife, Ri Sol Ju, who married in 2009, have three children.
“We’ve been told that Kim has three children, including possibly a son,” Soo Kim, a security analyst with the RAND Corporation in California, told PBS News Hour.
“If that is true, and if we assume that the male child — who has yet to be revealed — shall be the heir, is Ju Ae truly Kim’s most ‘precious’ from a succession standpoint?” Kim said. “I believe it is just too early to attract any conclusions.”
