Whenever Kim Jong Un’s daughter appears beside her father at a major military or political event, the same question follows: Is she North Korea’s next leader?
It is a reasonable question. Kim Ju Ae has increasingly appeared in state media and at important public events, while South Korea’s National Intelligence Service has assessed that North Korea appears to be positioning her as a possible successor.
But recent changes inside North Korea suggest another question may be more important.
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Is North Korea actually preparing for the post-Kim Jong Un era? The answer, at least for now, appears to be no.
North Korea recently made public the full text of its revised Workers’ Party charter, providing an unusually detailed look at how Kim Jong Un’s regime is being institutionalized. The document strengthens the authority of the party’s general secretary, giving Kim greater control over key party decisions and personnel appointments. It also removes references to the achievements of his grandfather, Kim Il Sung, and his father, Kim Jong Il, while placing greater emphasis on Kim Jong Un himself.
That change is more significant than it may first appear. For decades, North Korea’s political legitimacy was built around the legacy of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il. Kim Jong Un was presented as the heir to that tradition.
The new party charter suggests something different.
Kim is increasingly becoming the source of legitimacy himself. Nearly 15 years after taking power, Kim appears to be moving beyond simply inheriting the system created by his predecessors. He is reshaping the system around his own authority.
That raises an important question about succession.
If Kim is still in his early 40s, why would he need to establish a successor now?
There is a fundamental difference between preparing a possible successor and preparing for a succession.
Kim Ju Ae’s increasing public profile may indicate that Pyongyang is preparing her for a future role. But that does not necessarily mean North Korea is preparing to transfer power anytime soon.
A leader who is still relatively young has little incentive to create a second center of political gravity around a successor.
In an authoritarian system built on centralized personal rule, prematurely elevating a successor could create complications. Political elites may begin looking beyond the current leader, while institutions could gradually orient themselves toward the next generation. For Kim Jong Un, maintaining an unquestioned concentration of power may be more important than publicly settling who comes next.
This does not make Kim Ju Ae irrelevant.
Her appearances can serve a broader political purpose without constituting a succession announcement. She represents the continuation of the Kim family and the regime’s dynastic identity.
But symbolism is not the same as succession.
The revised party charter offers another important clue. North Korea has removed references to “peaceful unification” from the Workers’ Party charter. The changes reflect Kim’s broader redefinition of inter-Korean relations, in which the two Koreas are treated as separate and hostile states rather than members of a single national community destined for reunification.
This is not simply a change in language toward South Korea. It represents a broader attempt to redefine what the North Korean state is supposed to be.
For decades, unification was part of the ideological justification of the North Korean system. Under Kim Jong Un, however, nuclear weapons, regime security, national sovereignty, and strategic competition with the United States have increasingly taken precedence.
And at the center of that transformation is Kim himself. North Korea, therefore, appears to be doing something paradoxical. While the outside world continues to debate who will eventually succeed Kim, Pyongyang is concentrating on making the current leader’s system stronger, more centralized, and more institutionalized.
Perhaps that is the point.
North Korea may not need to decide today who comes after Kim Jong Un. It first needs to ensure that his political system can survive for as long as he remains in power.
The future of North Korea may eventually belong to Kim Ju Ae, another member of the Kim family, or someone we cannot yet identify.
But that is a question for the future.
For now, the evidence points somewhere else.
North Korea is not primarily preparing for a post-Kim Jong Un era. It is preparing for a longer Kim Jong Un era.
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And perhaps the most important question for the outside world is not who will rule North Korea after Kim Jong Un.
It is how much North Korea itself will have changed by the time that question finally matters.
Park Joonhye is a research fellow at the Institute for Far Eastern Studies, Kyungnam University. She received her master’s and Ph.D. in politics and unification studies from the University of North Korean Studies.