Kim Yo Jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, would be expected to assume control if anything happened to her brother, with specialists describing her as potentially more ruthless than the current leader.
Fresh speculation about Kim Jong-un's health circulated online after claims, reportedly originating from Wanjun Xie, Chairman of the China Democracy Party, that the North Korean leader had fallen into a coma following emergency transport to Beijing for urgent medical care. North Korean state media subsequently released "proof of life" photographs showing Kim at a garment and footwear exhibition. The images have not been independently verified, and the health status of the 42-year-old remains uncertain.
Who is Kim Yo Jong?
Kim Yo Jong, 38, is regarded as the second most influential figure in North Korea, holding two prominent governmental positions and wielding substantial sway within the nuclear-armed regime. She is the only daughter of Kim Jong Il, who governed the country from 1994 until his death in 2011. Her first public appearance came at her father's funeral, signalling a more central role during her brother's rule.
She has since held numerous positions, from vice director of the Korean Workers' Party's Propaganda and Agitation Department to membership of the State Affairs Commission. In 2018 she joined North Korea's contingent at the Winter Olympics in South Korea, and twelve months prior she was placed on the US sanctions list over the country's human rights record. Details of her private life remain scarce, with unconfirmed reports that she is married with two children and that she was educated in Bern, Switzerland, before completing her studies at Kim Il Sung University.
Warnings over her leadership
Retired US Army Colonel David Maxwell said: "We have to assume that every successor is worse than the last." He added: "I haven't seen any evidence, any indication of how she might rule, but my speculation - given the reputation and history of the family - is that she would rule with an iron fist."
Experts have suggested that if her brother died, she would take control as temporary leader until the dictator's daughter, Kim Ju Ae, 13, reached sufficient maturity to wield authority. Both Kim Yo Jong and her niece have accompanied the supreme leader at military displays and global conferences in recent years.
Hostile rhetoric and a 'nuclear despotess'
Sung-Yoon Lee, a professor at Tufts University, previously told the New York Post that Ms Kim was "ambitious and smart" and that she "does cast a softer feminine glow on the brutish facade of her regime". Her rhetoric towards South Korea has nonetheless been aggressive: in 2022 she told South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol to "shut his mouth" while branding him "really simple and still childish".
She also blamed Seoul for introducing Covid-19 into North Korea, declaring: "We have cleared out the virus spread by the South Korean scum. We must counter it toughly. We have already considered various counteraction plans but our countermeasure must be a deadly retaliatory one." South Korea has previously characterised her remarks as "deplorable" and suggested she possessed "no basic form of etiquette". She once labelled Joe Biden an "old man with no future".
Dr Sung-Yoon Lee examined her life in a biography titled The Sister: The extraordinary story of Kim Yo Jong, the most powerful woman in North Korea. In a piece for the Big Issue, he wrote: "Unauthorised and undiplomatic, my biography of Ms Kim pulls few punches. Referring to her as the world's first 'nuclear despotess', hence, the most dangerous woman out there, I portray her as the de facto second-in-command to her brother, who heads a nuclear-armed and uniquely cruel regime."
