North Korea: Kim Jong Un’s daughter depicted on official stamps

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s daughter will be featured on new propaganda stamps to be issued on Friday, Pyongyang said on Tuesday, another sign that the girl has been named heiress, experts say.

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 North Korea has never officially identified her by name, the intelligence agency and analysts in Seoul believe 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. On five of them figure Ju Ae, which indicates, for specialists, that North Korea has begun to build a personality cult around her, like the rest of the Kim clan.

The Pyongyang state-owned postage stamp 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 support this assumption.

The stamps appear to mark the “official start of Kim Ju Ae’s life as her father’s successor,” An Chan-il, a defector who is now a researcher at the head of the World Institute for Health, told AFP. North Korean Studies.

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’s still very possible that Ju Ae is just being used (for propaganda purposes)…and Kim’s eldest son is preparing for the succession behind closed doors.”

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