The Central Committee of the Workers’ Party on Monday appointed Kim Yo Jong, who was previously the deputy director of the department, as the full director of the department, the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said, according to AFP.
Party elites gathered in the capital Pyongyang for the fifth annual summit of the ruling Workers’ Party, a gathering that guides the state’s efforts from diplomacy to war planning.
Kim Yo Jong has long been among her brother’s closest associates and one of the most influential women in the isolated regime. She was born in the late 1980s, according to South Korean government records, and is one of Kim Jong Il’s three children.
She was educated in Switzerland with her brother and quickly rose through the ranks after he took over after their father’s death in 2011.
In 2018, she visited South Korea on the occasion of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, during the period of inter-Korean rapprochement.
Pyongyang often uses her name to issue statements expressing views or criticizing South Korea and the US.
This is only the ninth time that the Workers’ Party Congress has been held under the decades-long rule of the Kim family. Special attention will also be focused on the appearance of Kim’s daughter Ju Ae, who according to South Korea’s National Intelligence Service has emerged as the heir to the regime.
At the previous congress five years ago, Kim declared the United States his nation’s “greatest enemy.”
(Vijesti.ba / Fena)
