Kim Jong Un #1 Son
The Kim family had ruled for seven decades by passing power between male heirs like other hereditary dynasties, the third Kim had named no successor. in a patriarchal society such as North Korea, it's likely that Kim Jong Un's son, rather than his sister or daughter, will take over as ruler. His own children are young and the ruling family's surviving adults all faced potential barriers to their rise. A male heir would provide the most conventional line of succession in a dynasty previously ruled by Kim's father, Kim Jong Il, and founded by his grandfather, Kim Il Sung. North Korea, like the Soviet Union, does not have official line of succession. The leader is considered to be invincible in all ways. To plan for his death would be to admit his vulnerability.
Kim Jong Un is not just the leader. He is part of a personality cult built around the family dynasty of the Mount Paektu bloodline. The successor to the throne of power in North Korea has to come from the Kim Family Dynasty. In 2013, Clause 2 of Article 10 of the Ten Principles for the Establishment of a Monolithic Ideological System clearly states that the party and revolution must be carried “eternally” by the “Baekdu bloodline.”
The "Paektu bloodline" is a reference to the Kim family, also known as the Kim dynasty. The Kim family has ruled North Korea since the country's founding. The Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) uses the term "Mount Paektu bloodline" in their ideological discourse. The Kim dynasty associates itself with Mount Paektu, the mystical origin place of all Korean people because it is where the spiritual founder of Dangun, the human son of a god and a bear, was said to have been born in 2333 BC. The revered mountain straddles the border between North Korea and China.
The North Korean regime claims that Kim’s grandfather and founder of the country, Kim Il Sung, and his father, Kim Jong Il, were born on the mountain as a part of propaganda narrative created to mythologize the Kim family even though Kim Il Sung was born in Pyongyang, and his son Jong Il was born in Khabarovsk, Russia.
According to Chinese tradition, filial piety (Xiao / hsiao) was the primary duty of all Chinese. The top portion of the character for xiao shows an old man and underneath, a young man supporting the old man. There is this sense of the support by the young of the older generation and the respect of the young for the older generation, but it's also reciprocal. Confucius saw filial piety and fraternal submission as the foundation of all virtuous practice. Filial submission was the primary virtue necessary for an individual to fit into society.
Being a filial son meant complete obedience to one's parents during their lifetime and--as they grew older--taking the best possible care of them. Filial piety is a prime virtue in Confucianism. It's a prime virtue in the sense that, from the Confucian point of view, it's the starting point of virtue. Most important of all, a son had to make sure that the family line would be continued. Dying without a son therefore was one of the worst offenses against the concept of filial piety. If a marriage remained barren, it was a son's duty to take a second wife or adopt a child in order to continue the family.
Men had a higher status than women, so, sons were more valued than daughters and older children were to be respected by their younger brothers and sisters. With agriculture as their livelihood, the family needed children who could help with the farm labor, not more mouths to feed. Sons, being able to carry on the family name, were thus more valuable than daughters who would take upon th em a new family name when married. The Confucian family model was of a large, extended family living together.
According to the National Intelligence Service (NIS), the couple had three children. The oldest is believed to be a son born in 2010, according to South Korea's Dong-a Ilbo newspaper. Their daughter, widely known to the media as Ju-ae, is the second child. The eldest is a son. The gender of their third child is unknown.
Choe Su-yong, a retired NIS official, provides an account of the North Korean leader’s children. He claimed that Kim had two children with Ri; the eldest is a son and the girl, known as Ju-ae, is the younger. He said Kim had two other children born out of wedlock. These accounts, though slightly different, bith report Kim had a son with Ri who is older than their daughter. Since her first public appearance at the launch site of the Hwasong- 17 intercontinental ballistic missile in November, Kim’s daughter had drawn media frenzy.
Unlike Kim’s globally known daughter, his son is veiled in mystery. He had never been spotted in public. Little information is available about his son, triggering speculation about the North Korean leader’s motives behind his decision to appear in public only with his daughter. Some experts speculate that Kim’s daughter is an heir apparent and the father is helping his daughter hone her leadership skills. But others disagree and say it is too early to predict a successor.
There have been reports that Kim Jong Un's son is suffering from a mental disability, which is why he is not brought out in the public. But Kyou-hyun says "there is no intelligence that confirms rumours of physical or mental disabilities".
Choe claims Kim’s son doesn’t look good from North Koreans’ standpoint, and his unappealing physical appearance seems to have discouraged Kim from disclosing his son in public. “Unlike his father or his sister who is plump and well-fed, Kim’s son is said to be pale and thin,” he told The Korea Times, quoting sources in the North. “I heard that his son doesn’t look like his great-grandfather Kim Il-sung at all.”
For the royal family members in North Korea, a physical appearance that resembles Kim Il-sung (1912-1994), the founder of North Korea, is considered an asset in the rise to power. Kim Jong-un was chosen as a successor to his father, Kim Jong-il, because the younger Kim was aggressive and more like his grandfather than his elder brother Jong-chul, according to Kenji Fujimoto who served as chef for the Kim family for 13 years before he escaped the North in 2001. In his memoir published in 2003, Fujimoto recounted Kim Jong-chul as being quiet and shy. Several times his father mentioned the older son’s leadership succession, saying he was like a girl and could not make it.
Since coming to power in 2011 following the death of his father, Kim Jong-un had been emulating his grandfather. He speaks like his grandfather and walks like him too. The younger Kim changed his hairstyle, brandishing a short cut, a look that echoes the late Kim Il-sung.
In a media interview, Hong Soon-kyung, a former North Korean diplomat who defected to the South in 2000, said that the two Kims are very similar. The more I see the younger Kim (on TV), the more I feel that he’s just like his grandfather,” he said. “The way he wears clothes, the way he walks, everything about him makes me feel that way. I feel that a young Kim Il-sung is there as I saw the late Kim when I was in North Korea.”
The younger Kim’s endeavor to follow in the footsteps of his grandfather continued since his rise to power. During a military parade held in June this year, Kim was spotted with a bowler hat and black coat, clothing items his grandfather used to wear when he was young. The grandson was also seen in public several times with a wide-brimmed straw hat when he inspected several different sites, including railway and military facilities. His grandfather frequently wore such straw hats.
Kim Seong-min, president of Free North Korea Radio (FNKR), said Kim Jong-un seems to be trying to capitalize on the legacy and positive associations that North Koreans have with his grandfather. “Kim Il-sung used to gain a lot of support from the public when he was alive and he is still respected by North Koreans. But his son was not popular. The older Kim’s enduring popularity probably explains why he (Kim Jong-un) tries to make himself look like his grandfather,” he said.
The relatively stable economic situation during the Kim Il-sung era seemed to help his positive image among the people. His grandson and aides are taking advantage of public sentiment toward the founder of North Korea. Kim Jong-un’s endeavor to emulate his grandfather seems to be related to the cult of personality campaign aimed at drawing the support of North Koreans.
Like Kim Jong-un, his grandfather was obese with a fatty belly. In North Korea, FNKR leader Kim said, people with fat bellies are more likely to give a good first impression than skinny people are. “Most North Koreans are malnourished and skinny because they don’t eat well, and obese people are very rare,” he said. “So, when they see fatty people, they say they look like high-ranking officials of the Workers’ Party because unlike malnourished ordinary North Koreans, people from the upper class are well fed.” Therefore, from the average North Korean’s standpoint, he said people who are thin and pale are hardly likely to give a good impression to the public, especially if they are politicians.
Australia's leading North Korean expert, Leonid Petrov, at the International College of Management Sydney and the Australian National University, said the North Korean leader must be careful in the way he introduces any male heir. "If Kim really has a son, he should be careful about the timing [of] when to introduce him to the North Korean public and ruling elites," he said. "This would require a serious preparation effort by the official hagiographers, to create a positive image of the new rising star in North Korean political pinnacle."
South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) briefed the parliamentary intelligence committee in a closed-door meeting 07 March 2023 about Kim Jong-un’s children. The NIS said that Kim Jong-un’s eldest child is a boy, however it does not have 'concrete evidence' of this. While the agency confirms the existence a third child, the youngest sibling, their gender remains unknown. The NIS said it was unable to confirm the suspicions raised by some that Kim Jong-un's son is not physically or mentally fit to succeed him.
