An expert on North Korea says that the nation’s danger emanates not only from leader Kim Jong Un, but even more from his sister.
“I argue that Kim Yo Jong today is indeed the most dangerous woman in the world in all of Korean history, perhaps world history,” said Sung Yoon Lee, a professor at the Fletcher School at Tufts University, according to Fox News.
Lee has written a book on Kim Yo Jong titled “The Sister” that has chronicled the unusual story of a woman rising to power in North Korea.
“Although she is relatively young — she turns 36 at the end of September — she is a woman who brings, of course, a softer image to the brutish, chauvinistic, male-dominated facade of her nation,” he said.
“She is to be taken very seriously,” he continued.
Kim Yo Jong recently visited Russia along with her brother and has been a regular presence at key meetings. He noted she is mentioned as a possible successor.
“We have never seen this in North Korea, in Korean history, in world history, a female co-despotess — a female co-leader of a criminal regime — issuing nuclear threats and saying that I have the authority to nuke you, a peaceful, democratic neighboring state in South Korea,” Lee said.
Meet Kim Yo Jong: she’s North Korea’s propagandist-in-chief and also the younger sister of Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. Could she also be the country’s dictator-in-waiting? https://t.co/0lMsQQXPDB pic.twitter.com/eRI42tW1RM
— The Economist (@TheEconomist) September 9, 2023
He said that she poses a unique threat.
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“When she says, ‘OK, let’s talk about denuclearization or normalization of diplomatic relations,’ many of us will be prone to wanting to believe her just because she is a woman,” he said. “So, she is ambitious, she is smart, she is ruthless and, therefore, we should take her very seriously and not patronize her.”
In a comment to the U.K.’s Daily Mail, Lee said some North Korean officials refer to Kim Yo Jong as a “bloodthirsty demon” and “the devil woman.”
Last month, she was North Korea’s representative on the world stage as she deplored the alliance between the United States and South Korea, according to NBC.
She scolded President Joe Biden for a warning that North Korea’s regime could fall due to its aggression.
She called Biden senile as well as “too miscalculating and irresponsibly brave.”
North Korea, she said, would not dismiss a “nonsensical remark from the person in his dotage.”
“When we consider that this expression was personally used by the president of the U.S., our most hostile adversary, it is threatening rhetoric for which he should be prepared for far too great an after-storm,” she said.
“The more the enemies are dead set on staging nuclear war exercises, and the more nuclear assets they deploy in the vicinity of the Korean Peninsula, the stronger the exercise of our right to self-defense will become in direct proportion to them,” she said.
