The country’s ruling party has elevated leader Kim Jong-un’s (pic) powerful younger sister to a top position, state media said, a sign of her far-reaching influence within the reclusive nation.
Thousands of party elites have packed the capital Pyongyang for a once-in-five-years summit of the ruling Workers’ Party, a gathering that directs state efforts on everything from diplomacy to war planning.
Kim Yo-jong – long considered one of her brother’s closest lieutenants – was promoted to department director within the party’s apex central committee, the Korean Central News Agency said.
Although it was not clear which department she would lead, she has previously held a senior role within the party’s propaganda unit.
She was also reinstated as an “alternate” member of the Politburo of the ruling party’s Central Committee, following her demotion in 2021.
Yo-jong has in recent years emerged as one of the most powerful figures in North Korea, playing a highly visible role in diplomacy, nuclear negotiations and other matters of state.
“Kim Yo-jong is one of the very few people Kim Jong-un can trust and rely on,” said Ahn Chan-il, a researcher originally from North Korea.
“She also served as a working-level official for Kim’s summits with Trump in Singapore and Hanoi. She is experienced and seasoned,” he said.
Yo-jong burst on to the international scene in 2018, when she was dispatched to Seoul as North Korea’s envoy for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
With that trip, she became one of the first members of the ruling Kim dynasty to set foot in the South since the Korean War.
Since then she has gained a reputation for her vitriolic denunciations of Washington and Seoul.
She once derided the government of former South Korean president Yoon Suk-yeol as a “faithful dog” of the United States.
Yo-jong’s latest advancement “amounts to promotion to ministerial rank,” said Lim Eul-chul from the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University.
Meanwhile, Jong-un pledged to solidify and develop the quality of the country’s economy over the next five years.
North Korea on Monday held the fifth day of the Ninth Congress of the ruling Workers’ Party, which sets out major policy goals for the nuclear-armed Asian nation for the next five years.
Calling the next five years a “full-scale progress phase” in his speech on Monday, Jong-un called for revolutionising thought, technology and culture so new projects will be well-managed over time, KCNA said yesterday.
The North Korean leader also warned that “dereliction of duty, irresponsibility and other ingrained maladies of seeking only immediate gains” will be rooted out, it said. — AFP/Reuters
