By Kyu-seok Shim
SEOUL, April 6 (Reuters) – South Korea’s spy agency now believes North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s teenage daughter has been positioned as his successor, lawmakers said on Monday, citing her recent public display of driving a tank in a move aimed at dispelling any suspicions.
The National Intelligence Service (NIS) told MPs that its assessment was not based on circumstantial guesswork, but on “credible intelligence” collected by the agency, according to a briefing of ruling and opposition party members after a closed-door parliamentary meeting.
The NIS said the image of the daughter driving a tank was intended to highlight her alleged military qualifications and cast doubt on a female successor, lawmakers said.
North Korea’s state media KCNA last month published photos of Kim and his daughter driving a new tank, after earlier photos had shown her firing a rifle and using a handgun at a shooting range.
Ruling Democratic Party lawmaker Park Sun-won said such scenes were intended to “pay tribute” to Kim’s own public military appearances in the early 2010s, when he was being groomed to succeed his father.
The latest assessment of Kim’s daughter, reported to be around 13 years old and named Ju Ae, follows on from the spy agency’s earlier analysis which said she was possibly being groomed to succeed her father.
Lawmakers cited the NIS as saying that Xu A’s frequent appearances at defense-related events were aimed at reducing suspicion over a female successor and accelerating the construction of a succession narrative.
Lawmakers have previously said the agency believes his increasingly prominent role shows he is already being treated as the de facto second-highest figure in the North’s leadership.
People’s Power Party lawmaker Lee Seong-kwan said the NIS noted that Kim’s younger sister Kim Yo Jong may be unhappy with the focus on Ju A, adding that this is incorrect, as Kim Yo Jong does not have independent power.
However, some North Korea experts urged caution in interpreting the images as definitive succession signals.
Hong Min, an analyst at the Korea Institute for National Unification, said that Ju Ae’s tank appearance alone was insufficient to conclude that she had been confirmed as Kim’s successor, noting that she appeared independently alongside her father, in contrast to Kim Jong Un’s solo military appearance during his beauty phase.
(Reporting by Kyu-seok Shim, editing by Ed Davis)
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