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Kim Yo-jong, the younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, is pictured attending the 3rd Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea on Thursday. (Yonhap News)

Kim Yo-jong, younger sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, has a unique role and status in the North. Her official position is vice department director of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) Central Committee, of which she is a member.

That puts Kim Yo-jong lower on the official totem pole than Foreign Minister Ri Son-gwon, a provisional member of the WPK Central Committee’s Politburo.

During the 3rd Plenary Session of the 8th WPK Central Committee, on June 15-18, Ri sat in the second row of seats behind Kim Jong-un, a position reserved for politburo members, while Kim Yo-jong sat in the general section down below.

But Kim’s actual status appears to be much higher than Ri’s, and her role much broader.

To take one example, Ri said in a statement released by the Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) on Wednesday that “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs [. . .] welcomes the clear-cut press statement issued by [Kim Yo-jong] the vice department director of the Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea, which is to brush off hasty judgment, conjecture and expectation [by] the US.”

Ri’s statement followed one released the previous day by Kim Yo-jong, who said that the Americans’ false hopes could “plunge them into greater disappointment.” To borrow a North Korean phrase, Ri’s statement functioned as an “echo” of Kim’s statement.

North Korean Foreign Minister Ri Son-gwon (left) attends the 3rd Plenary Session of the 8th Central Committee of the Workers’ Party of Korea on June 17. (Yonhap News)

It was a statement by Kim Yo-jong that opened the floodgates on North Korea’s complaints about propaganda balloons launched by defector groups in the South in June 2020. WPK United Front Department Director Jang Kum-chol, who is higher in the WPK hierarchy than Kim, backed her up by releasing two follow-up statements.

A meeting about assessing projects related to South Korean affairs was chaired not by Jang Kum-chol, the person officially in charge of those projects, but by Kim Yo-jong and WPK Central Committee Vice Chairman Kim Yong-chol. The spokesperson of the United Front Department said that Kim Yo-jong was “supervising South Korean affairs.”

Kim Yo-jong’s peculiar status and role — at once lofty and lowly — traces back to the fact that she’s the only relative of Kim Jong-un to be actively involved in North Korean politics, as well as her membership in the Paektu bloodline, referring to direct descendants of Kim Il-sung and Kim Jong-il.

Kim Yo-jong has come to serve as the mouthpiece of her elder brother Kim Jong-un, releasing five statements this year alone. Four of those statements were directed at South Korea (Jan. 13, March 16, March 30, and May 2) and one at the US (June 22). That indicates that Kim Yo-jong’s area of responsibility covers both South Korea and the US.

Park Jie-won, director of South Korea’s National Intelligence Service, told members of the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee on June 9 that Kim Yo-jong “serves as [Kim Jong-un’s] de facto second-in-command on South Korea, US, livelihood issues, and COVID-19.”

By Le Je-hun, senior staff writer

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