MISE À DAY
The daughter of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un will be featured on new propaganda stamps to be issued on Friday, Pyongyang said Tuesday, in another sign that the girl has been named heir. according to experts.
For years, North Korean state media never mentioned Kim's children. But in November, during the test firing of North Korea's most powerful intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), Kim Jong Un appeared with his “beloved” daughter.
Although Korea du Nord has never officially identified her by name, the intelligence agency and analysts in Seoul believe that it is Ju Ae, her second child. According to experts, she would be the one to succeed her father.
Pyongyang on Tuesday unveiled a set of stamps – to be officially released on Friday – honoring the November test firing. Five of them feature Ju Ae, which indicates, for specialists, that North Korea has begun to build a cult of personality around her, like the rest of the Kim clan.
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The postage stamp company, Pyongyang's state-owned company, described the child as Kim's “beloved daughter” on its website where the stamps were unveiled, without specifically naming her.
Some experts believe that the girl's public appearances indicate that she is being groomed to become the next ruler and that the stamps reinforce this assumption.
The stamps appear to mark the “official debut of Kim Ju Ae's life as her father's successor,” An Chan-il, a defector now researcher at the head of the World Institute for North Korean Studies, told AFP. p>
But for others, it's still too early to speculate, given that Kim Jong Un is still young and his daughter's name has never been officially announced.
Professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, Yang Moo-jin points out that each time an heir was approached in North Korea, the leader in place made sure that the name of this successor was known. .
“It is still very possible that Ju Ae is just being used (for propaganda purposes) (…) and that Kim's eldest son is preparing er to the estate behind closed doors.”