As North Korean leader Kim Jong Un threatened Seoul and vowed to continue expanding his sanctioned nuclear weapons programme at the party congress, the big question was whether his 13-year-old daughter would be anointed as his heir.
That news, or any unquestionable indication of it, didn’t materialise this week.
But it has launched a debate about the young Kim Ju Ae’s viability as the next leader for the country of 25 million – a dictatorship which has only ever been ruled by a member of the Kim family.
The party congress, a key meeting of North Korean leaders and officials that takes place every five years, is usually watched closely for Kim’s message to Seoul and Washington.
But this time the focus shifted. Last week Seoul’s spy agency briefed lawmakers that it believes Kim has selected his daughter as his heir, and that she was seen giving her opinion on policy matters.
Although she is becoming more visible alongside her father on state media, much about her remains a mystery. North Korea has never published her name or age.
Her existence was first publicised when basketball star Dennis Rodman told The Guardian her name after his visit to Pyongyang in 2013. She is widely believed to be 13 years old partly based on estimates by intelligence reports.
Seoul’s spy agency had earlier said she has an older brother, but they have since distanced themselves from the assessment.
“It was an intelligence failure,” says Cheong Seong-chang, a North Korea watcher and vice-president at Sejong Institute who was an early proponent of the theory that Ju Ae will become the heir.
Cheong and other analysts now believe that Ju Ae is the oldest child and has a nine-year-old sister.
She first appeared in public in a state TV report in 2022, holding her father’s hand while inspecting North Korea’s latest missile.
Cheong says her TV appearances – where she is placed in the centre of the frame and the state media’s description of her as “the respected child” – are the clearest sign that she has become the official heir.
“The state media is using words reserved for the supreme leader. It underlines her own cult of personality.”
Her proximity to the country’s military is another sign, Cheong adds.
She inspected troops and weapons alongside her father. Several times, the top generals were seen kneeling beside her to whisper in her ear as she sat with her father watching military parades.
Kim Jong Un’s power rests in his control of the military, Cheong explains. If Ju Ae were to succeed him, she would need to appear as a credible military commander.
When inspecting troops with her father, she dons the same long black leather coat and dark sunglasses that he wears.
When Kim Jong Un inherited power, it happened rather suddenly. He only appeared publicly a year before his father’s passing.
Cheong believes Kim is trying to avoid such a rapid transition by introducing Ju Ae early to the regime and the public.
There is no evidence that Kim Jong Un is suffering from ill health, aside from references to his weight, smoking and drinking habits.
But Kim might be trying to appoint his heir early to avoid a succession crisis, according to Cheong.
However, former North Korean official Ryu Hyun-woo sees little possibility of a woman ruling over the country.
Ryu, who served as a diplomat before defecting in 2019, says the North Korean legal code, created by the Kim family, requires the country to be run by a person of the Paektu bloodline – in other words, a direct descendant of the country’s founder Kim Il Sung.
Although Ju Ae is of the bloodline, North Korea’s patriarchal system would not see her as being of the bloodline, Ryu says.
Women at every level struggle to be treated equally in North Korea. Female officials are rare and female military commanders are even rarer.
In Pyongyang, many taxi drivers refuse women if they are their first customers for the day because of a superstition that it brings misfortune, according to Ryu.
“If they do, they finish the ride then go to the back of their car and spit three times to dispel the bad luck,” he says.
For all these reasons, Ryu cannot imagine Ju Ae leading North Korea.
He believes it would be shocking enough that “military commanders may think to themselves that anyone could be a leader of North Korea now, so they may even dream of overthrowing [the leadership]”.
In Ryu’s view, Kim is parading his daughter on state media only to soften his ruthless image, and to plant the idea of yet another hereditary succession.
But others, including South Korean intelligence, believe otherwise.
For one, the status of women in North Korea has made great leaps since the so-called Arduous March – the famine caused in the 1990s when North Korea’s economy collapsed.
While men continued to do state-sanctioned jobs, even as their pay and rations dwindled, it was women who looked for ways to feed their families. They opened businesses, sold goods in the black market or became smugglers.
Song Hyun-jin, who interviewed more than 120 North Korean defectors about women’s leadership in the regime, says it’s no longer rare to see women managing factories and filling party seats in North Korea.
In recent years, North Korean TV shows have featured men wearing aprons and doing housework – a sign of how much has changed there.
Ju Ae’s gender will not stand in the way if her father decides that she will take his spot, Song says. Her family and her regal upbringing in an otherwise poor country are enough for the everyday North Korean to accept her as leader.
“We cannot think of North Korea with our logic. We must imagine them as the Joseon dynasty,” Song says, referring to a medieval Korean kingdom. “Who would dare defy someone of royal blood who is taking the throne?”
This week, the party promoted Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister, to the role of propaganda minister. Cheong believes it is a sign that Kim Jong Un is making his sister a guardian to his daughter.
When Kim Jong Un took the reins at the age of 27, making him the world’s youngest leader, many had hoped he would open North Korea to the outside world.
The dream quickly vanished – in 2013, he executed his reformist uncle.
In the years since his nuclear weapons programme has grown and the regime’s iron grip on every aspect of life has shown no signs of loosening.
Cheong says there is no reason to believe Ju Ae will not continue in the same vein. He dismisses the notion that she might be more open or lenient as stemming from stereotypes about women.
Ryu, whose father-in-law is still part of Kim Jong Un’s inner circle, says the debate around Kim’s heir may be a goal in itself.
“Kim is a bigger attention-seeker than you think. He loves all these articles being written about him and his possible heir.”
