Kim Jong Un has designated his daughter, Kim Ju Ae, as the heir apparent, according to reports from South Korean intelligence

A spy agency in South Korea says that Kim Jong Un has named his teenage daughter Kim Ju Ae as his official heir.

On Thursday, South Korea’s spy agency told lawmakers that Kim Jong Un has chosen his daughter Kim Ju Ae to be his heir.

According to the National Intelligence Service, Ju Ae, who is thought to be about 13 years old, has now reached the stage of “successor designation.” They gave several reasons for this, such as the fact that she is becoming more visible at government events.

The intelligence agency said it would keep a close eye on her to see if she goes to North Korea’s upcoming party congress, which is the country’s biggest political meeting and happens every five years. Pyongyang is likely to lay out its plans for the next five years in terms of foreign policy, military strategy, and nuclear growth at the congress.

According to lawmakers Lee Seong-kwen and others, Ju Ae is now formally being prepared for the job after the NIS said earlier that she was being trained as a possible successor. He said she was at important state events like the anniversary of the founding of the Korean People’s Army and a trip to the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun. He also said there are signs that she is speaking out about some state practices.

Ju Ae is the only child of Kim Jong Un and Ri Sol Ju who is known to the world. The NIS also thinks Kim might have an older son, but North Korean media have never talked about or shown him.

In 2013, Dennis Rodman, a former NBA star, told The Guardian that he had cuddled “baby Ju Ae” while he was in the country. This was the first time that people heard about Ju Ae. She first appeared on state TV in 2022, looking at an intercontinental ballistic missile with her dad by her side.

After that, she has been in a lot of state media, and she is usually shown with her father. While in Beijing for a big military show, she was seen getting off of his armored train at Beijing Railway Station. In addition, she has been taken walking next to him instead of behind him, standing at the same level as him. This is an important detail in a country where official images are carefully planned and symbolic.

A lot of the time, Ju Ae is shown with long hair, which is not allowed for girls her age in North Korea, and wearing expensive clothes that most people in the country couldn’t afford.

Another lawmaker, Park Sun-won, said that the fact that she is visible at public events shows that she is seen as the second-highest leader and that she has started to weigh in on policy talks.

The Kim family has been in charge of North Korea for three generations, and most people think Kim Jong Un will continue the family tradition. There are still questions about why a daughter would be picked in a society with a strong male culture, where many analysts and defectors have long thought it was unlikely that a woman would be in charge.

Kim’s sister, Kim Yo Jong, is an example of a woman in charge in the government. She is very important in the ruling party’s Central Committee and is said to have a lot of power.

It’s also still not clear why Kim Jong Un, who looks pretty young and healthy, is choosing a replacement now.

It is not clear what Ju Ae’s replacement could mean for North Korea’s future. Some people in Korea thought that Kim Jong Un, who was educated in the West, would make the country more open to the rest of the world when he first took power. Those hopes were mostly not met. If Ju Ae becomes boss in the end, she will have a lot of power to decide the country’s military and political path.