North Korean defectors see Kim Jong Uns daughter as heir apparent: Like gods reigning over humans

Until she fled North Korea three years ago, Kim Yumi felt deeply frustrated whenever state TV showed leader Kim Jong Un with his young daughter.The message, she felt, was clear and worrying: North Korea was laying the groundwork for an eventual hereditary transfer of power, this time to Kim’s daughter.Publicly questioning the Kim dynasty’s hold on power would mean severe persecution.

Already angered by draconian pandemic regulations that ruined her family’s fishing business, she defected to South Korea by boat with her family.“My husband and I didn’t want our children to live under a fourth-generation dictatorship.As parents, we thought the best thing we could do for our children was to give them freedom,” said Kim Yumi, 32, who now lives in Seoul.North Korea allows no dissent and harshly punishes attempts to flee the country.

Established in 1948, the nation is nominally a socialist republic, but in reality it is an authoritarian dynasty, with three generations of the Kim family ruling in succession.There was no known public resistance during its previous two successions — from state founder Kim Il Sung to his son Kim Jong Il in 1994 and then from Kim Jong Il to his son Kim Jong Un in 2011.This time, North Korea is apparently trying something radical.Kim Jong Un’s repeated public appearances with his daughter over the past four years have led to speculation that she’s being groomed as her father’s heir.The question of who will become North Korea’s next leader is crucial because that person will face a huge challenge — governing an impoverished, nuclear-armed nation whose 26 million people have little political freedom and live under strict state surveillance while being cut off from much of the outside world.North Koreans have no say in the selection of their future leader, and analysts and defectors say they will passively accept a third dynastic succession — at least publicly.To gauge North Koreans’ private views, The Associated Pres...