Today, Explained - North Korea's girl dad dictator

Episode Date: June 22, 2026

North Korea has been led by a string of vicious dictators — all men. But Kim Jong Un seems to be auditioning his daughter for the job. This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Jolie Myers, fact-checked by Gabriel Dunatov, engineered by David Tatasciore and Patrick Boyd, and hosted by Noel King. A TV screenshot of North Korea leader Kim Jong Un's daughter attending a parade for North Korea's 75th anniversary. Photo by ANTHONY WALLACE/AFP via Getty Images. Listen to Today, Explained ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. New Vox members get $20 off their membership right now. Transcript at ⁠vox.com/today-explained-podcast.⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Some of the most enduring images of North Korea are these satellite pictures taken at night. You've probably seen them. The neighboring countries are ablaze with the lights of cities and towns, but once you hit North Korea's borders, it's just black. Everything's dark. North Korea is very poor and has very poor infrastructure that includes electricity because of years of sanctions from the U.S. and other countries aimed at punishing it for its nuclear program. Until now, that's how we've understood North Korea. But the Wall Street Journal recently reported a staggering statistic. Last year in the capital Pyongyang, more than 10,000 homes were built.

That's more than we're thrown up in either Los Angeles or Chicago. Something is happening in North Korea. The image that's been painted for us by recent visitors to the North Korean capital is an economy that's on the uptick, an economy that's thriving. And that was hugely surprising to us. Coming up on today, explained from Vox, boom times in the Hermit King's. support for this show comes from fetch pet insurance. Do you have a pet? Every six seconds, a pet owner in the U.S. gets hit with a vet bill of over $1,000. And it's almost always an unwelcome surprise. That's where Fetch pet

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This is today explained. Tim Martin is the Korea Bureau Chief for the Wall Street Journal and he recently co-wrote this great piece about a completely unexpected development in North Korea. It's a North Korea that really compared to just a few years, ago is modernizing. You can see smartphones on the streets. There's more cars. There's traffic jams. There are new street laws telling North Koreans not to jaywalk. There are so many vehicles. North Korea is brighter from outer space at night. So this is a completely different picture than certainly what maybe the world thinks about North Korea. And it's even a different picture

than people who've been to North Korea many times and hadn't gone in many years. Just five years ago, Kim Jong-un at an important congressional party meeting had said, I'm sorry, the economy's not working. Our policy has failed on the economy. He shed tears in public. He admitted in a rare way for our North Korean leader, we have food shortages. We are struggling. And then right on the heels of this was COVID. And North Korea has no, because it's so poor, it doesn't have great public infrastructure.

So anytime there's a pandemic or a broad health scare, they have to shut everything down. So they closed its borders. And that cut off their trade, particularly with China. And that really affixated the economy. So even by North Korea's own sort of unique standards of economic vibrancy, they were at a weak point. And this is where Kim Jong-un was five years ago in a shocking way, issuing a mea-copa to his people, saying, we're not doing well.

And what we've seen over those five years, it's a bit of luck. It's a bit of focus. It's a bit of Kim Jong-un wanting to reassert control over his economy, but they've had multiple ways to produce this economic rebound. North Korea got a break, if you will, with Russia's invasion to Ukraine. What did North Korea do? They first began offering munitions, supplying munitions, en masse to Russia's war machine. We see how much military support Russia gets from North Korea. North Korea is providing significant munitions to Russia and other weapons. And the two countries signed a mutual defense pact,

and that laid the legal groundwork for what took the North Korea-Russia relationship to a whole new level. Now to a development in the war in Ukraine. The U.S. State Department says there are signs that North Korean troops are in Russia. According to Ukrainian intelligence, Pyongyang is sending up to 30,000 more troops to bolster Russian forces along the front lines. North Korea initially sent some 11,000 troops to Russian territory last year. And that was the deployment of thousands of North Korean troops to the Russian front lines to fight the Ukrainians. And this provided Putin and Russia something it really needed bodies and soldiers. and North Koreans fought and died for this war with Ukraine on Russia's behalf.

So this injected billions of dollars into the regime. And to give you some perspective, North Korea's GDP is estimated to be about $27 billion annually. And they've accrued, according to some estimates, more than $10 billion just in the past. past two and a half years or so. Whoa. It's a significant amount of money or assets flowing into North Korea. So the Russia part is very important. There are two other pieces to this.

China is North Korea's main benefactor and trading partner. It warehouses many of Kim Jong-un cyber warriors who, again, to the point of North Korea's relatively small GDP, which is not even 1% of what the U.S.'s GDP is, these hackers and cyber operatives bring in at least $1 billion a year to the regime. And North Korea has also shown itself to be the world's best thief of cryptocurrency. They've pulled off multiple massive heists of exchanges, you know, even over a billion dollars in a single action. All right. So tell me about what this looks like on the ground. Let's say I'm in the capital Pyongyang and I'm looking around. What might I see there that I wouldn't

have seen five years ago. It would be noisy. There's so much construction happening in Pyongyang, and it would be noisy not only from the construction and the bulldozers, but also there'd be a lot more cars on the streets, and not just unrecognizable North Korean brands. You're seeing Chinese EVs. And we talked with Westerners who had traveled dozens of times to North Korea before the pandemic, and these same visitors went back.

and Pyongyang, at least, looks like any other major city in that lots of people have smartphones. Their necks are craned looking at their screens. This just shows North Korea has more resources, more of a technological digital ecosystem, and they're trying to put themselves more on par with the rest of the world. Okay, so there is a thing that sometimes happens in countries that put themselves on par with the rest of the world, which is you get richer, life gets more. convenient and you start thinking a little bit outside of, you know, the box that you've been living in, right? So you're talking about smartphones, ride-hailing apps, digital payments. This is a country

that is modernizing very rapidly. Does that mean North Koreans are starting to make any demands? I mean, this is a very, very repressive country. It's sometimes harder to oppress people when they've got iPhones. In fact, I think the opposite is occurring. Wow. North Korea has learned from countries, say, like China, and you'd think, well, if you have smartphones, you can access the Internet and you can learn about the world. And this is the complete opposite in North Korea. They are using technology to tighten its digital news over its population. A North Korean smartphone user doesn't have free run

at the internet and information. Everything is tightly controlled by the regime. You're only allowed to access an internet that North Korea chooses. These are the North Korean curated sites for you to go to. These are the apps that we can have you have access to certain things you try to text into your phone, like South Korea, for instance,

auto-corrects to the way North Korea refers to South Korea, which is southern Chosun. The smartphones, at any given moment will take a random snapshot of what's on your screen. If a police officer stops you on the street and says, show me your phone, which is a fairly frequent occurrence, then you're subjected to this audit of what you look at on your phone. I think Kim Jong-un is very happy for more North Koreans to have smartphones,

because, again, it allows this surveillance capability to be supercharged. Is the economic boom benefiting ordinary North Koreans, all North Koreans, or just kind of like a handful of elite up at the top? It is concentrated in the North Korean capital, and it's not like, hey, I would love a view of the beautiful river in downtown Pyongyang, so I'm going to move there. No, only people connected to the party, people with money, people with political connections can even live in the capital. So if you leave Pyongyang, the country still is very poor, malnourished, half the population, doesn't have enough food. So, yes, it's disproportionately going to Pyongyang and the elites, but it's not the only area where North Korea is seeing growth. If the economic growth is based on a war that will someday hopefully end and some scams, however successful, is that really a recipe for? a strong economic future for this country?

Many of these drivers could be fleeting for sure. Russia's war machine could rev down if there's an end to the war in Ukraine. But I think there would be a long tail there in terms of Russia wanting a cheap way to replenish many of its munitions. So how sustainable is this? I think Kim Jong-un has a degree of comfort politically, militarily, and now economically. And that allows him to sort of call the shots. Does he want to re-engage with the U.S.?

Does he even need a sanction steal at this point? One of the benefits of where Kim Jong-un has his economy at the moment is he can do what he wants. There aren't tough questions being asked. He's controlling the inflow and outflow of massive parts of the economy. If you imagine a world war sanctions are lifted and tons of outside capital from South Korea or the U.S. or Japan is flowing in, these are foreigners, bringing the investment, snooping around, seeing if their money is being properly deployed. That's a risk to Kim Jong-un. Ultimately, there's probably a way he tries to achieve an economy that has outsiders coming in and investing in the country that can lift more of the country

out of poverty, but I think for right now he's very comfortable. That's Tim Martin, the Korea Bureau Chief for The Wall Street Journal. Coming up, Kim Jong-un's heir apparent. She's stylish. She can fire a rifle. She can drive a tank, and she's a teenager. Support for today explain comes from Built Rewards. Is housing one of your biggest monthly expenses? Why not make that expense work for you? Built can help you do that. It's a membership program for where you live that gives you points on every housing payment.

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com slash save. Fetch love longer. That's nice. This is today explained. I'm Anna Fyfield. I am a journalist and I wrote a book called The Great Successor, the divinely perfect destiny of brilliant comrade Kim Jong-un. Anna, there is a girl who we've seen in photos alongside Kim Jong-un.

We've seen her at missile launches. military parades, other big state events. This girl is his daughter. What do we know about her and why is her presence at his side getting so much attention? Well, there's a lot we don't know about her, but what we think we know is that her name is Kim Jew A, and that she is about 13 years old. And we have a very unusual source for this information,

which is Dennis Rodman. Oh, who became the first American to meet with the new leader of North Korea? the wild child of basketball Dennis Rodman. I said, your grandfather and your father do some bad things. I said, but you are trying to train something. When Kim Jong-un was just in the beginning of his reign, there was an effort by some Americans to kind of reach out to him and see if

they could get in contact, find out a little more about this guy. And everybody knew that Kim Jong-un loved the Chicago Bulls. So first of all, a request was made to Michael Jordan. He was not interested in going to North Korea for some reason, but Dennis Rodman was up for going to North Korea. I'm sorry that my country and your country are not on good terms, but for me, sir, thank you. You have a friend for life.

And that started this weird period of kind of basketball diplomacy when a United States main envoy to North Korea was a washed-up basketball star. And when the basketballer went to North Korea about 12 years ago and met Kim Jong-un, he was also introduced and he held this baby. In an interview with The Guardian, Rodman filled the newspaper in on the young dictator's parenting skills. He's a good dad and has a beautiful family. I held their baby, Jouet, and spoke with Miss Rhee as well. For him to open his heart and his mind to give me his daughter,

for the first time in history I hold his kid. And so he was told at the time that the baby was about one year old and her name was Kim Ju-A. So that is how we base our knowledge of her name. Not the most reliable source, but the North Koreans have never named her in state media or anywhere. So that's the name we're going with until they tell us otherwise. But the reason she's gathered so much attention over the past couple of years is that she has emerged at her father. side repeatedly and in the most unusual circumstances. She has been going to her intercontinental missile launches.

At the launch of North Korea's newest long-range missile, a strangely tender moment from Kim Jong-un, hand in hand with his young daughter the first time any of his children have been officially seen in public. So it's very significant to see how senior North Korean officials will shake her hand, bow to her, be very respectful towards. her despite her being a child. She's been out with her father on a bunch of occasions, often wearing similar outfits,

like a leather bomber jacket like he was wearing when they drove a tank together. So very unusual daddy-daughter outings for a 13-year-old. And this, of course, has stoked a lot of speculation that she is his heir apparent and that he wants her to take over the family business, which is running a totalitarian regime. Yes, it is indeed a family business. He took over, Kim Jong-un took over from his father, and you and others have written about how he was kind of kept hidden before he was announced as the next leader of North Korea. Why do you think Kim Jong-un is being so public with his own kid, given that the way he came up was

different? Yeah, well, Kim Jong-un is the third-generation leader of North Korea, so they've only had a transition twice before, so there's really no set way of doing this. But with Kim Jong-un's father, he spent 20, 30 years being promoted through the ranks and appearing in public as a full-grown man to get this sense of legitimacy, the idea that he was the next leader of North Korea. But with Kim Jong-un, it was extremely rushed. His father had a stroke in 2008.

Now South Korean officials are saying that Kim had brain surgery after suffering a stroke about August 15th. And died at the end of 2011. Kim Jong-il died aged 69 of a heart attack on December the 17th, according to state media. In Pyongyang, tears for their supreme leader. North Koreans lined up to mourn the death of Kim Jong-il. Father General, where are you? She wailed. Grown men, many in uniform, blubbered like babies.

So really, Kim Jong-un was unveiled to the public in 2009, and then had this extremely fast rolling out kind of debut period where he was very, very quickly promoted through the ranks, made a general, given political office in the Workers Party of Korea, the ruling party, there is only one. He is truly not a ready-for-frimetime player. The Chinese themselves are a little worried about whether he's really up to the task. So it seemed to be quite hairy for a while there,

It wasn't clear that he was going to be able to win the support of these octogenarian apparatchiks who'd been there for decades running this system. So I can only kind of deduce from this now that Kim Jong-un wants to make sure that his ear doesn't go through the same very rushed, difficult process. So it's not like, I mean, Kim Jong-un is still in his mid-40s, although he doesn't look particularly healthy, but it's not likely that he's about to hand over leadership anytime soon, but I think he's probably laying the groundwork for in 30 or 40 years for his daughter to take over, because it would be an extremely difficult thing for this dynastic communist monarchy

to go, move to a fourth generation, but even more so for a woman to take over in a society that is extremely patriarchal. When did her appearances start? When did people start saying it looks like this man wants his daughter to take over? Yeah, it was about almost three years ago that Kim Juei started appearing in public. And at the beginning, there was quite a lot of skepticism or talk about what she was doing there, why he was bringing her out to all these missile launches. Kim Juehueh happens to be the best secret weapon that Pyongyang has right now,

because Chairman Kim Jong-un has been afraid of losing the world's attention. He also doesn't want to present anything that is threatening to him. And so having a young girl as his potential successor removes any threat, it's not like they're going to be clicks forming around a 13-year-old girl. Heart of it is he could be trying to show a softer face to the leadership and to the people. And I think that's partly because it's very unusual to take your 11-year-old to a missile launch. Yeah. but also because it just seemed completely beyond the pale that even in North Korea,

that he would try to promote a young girl as the leader of North Korea. But as she has taken on more and more appearances, as she's growing up in the public eye, she's been called the kind of the beloved daughter in the state propaganda in North Korea, it has seemed more likely that he is grooming her and preparing the, 1% in Pyongyang who keep him in power for the idea that she will one day take over. So it's gone from being quite unlikely to seeming increasingly inevitable that he will try, at least, to have her takeover. Does he have other children?

Again, another thing we don't know. Wow. Wow. I mean, the South Korean intelligence service didn't even know how to spell Kim Jong-un's name until the North Koreans revealed it in the state propaganda. You know, there is no human intelligence. on North Korea, so there is so much we don't know. Given that North Korea is a patriarchal society and that sexism exists everywhere in the world

and that this girl is very young, how confident are you that if North Korea, if something happens to Kim Jong-un, North Korea's military and single party and elites would actually rally behind this kid? Well, I mean, I guess it depends on when it happens. I should say, you know, I didn't think Kim Jong-un could do it. I didn't think that the old guard would accept this, you know, young 20-something who'd grown up playing basketball in Switzerland and had no political or military experience to be the next leader of the regime. But through his, you know, very brutal rule and his propensity to execute his naysayers, Kim Jong-un has managed to do it.

So I'd never say never in terms of whether Kim Ju-A could take. over, but I do think it's extremely, extremely difficult, partly because, you know, this regime is extremely anachronistic. It should have probably collapsed decades ago with the demise of the Soviet Union and the death of its founder, but somehow it has managed to endure through this mixture of kind of corruption, kleptocracy and fear, just keeping the ordinary people plus the old guard who run the country living in constant fear of being purged or worse. So it's not impossible that the daughter would be able to work something out to take over, but I mean, I am again skeptical.

And a very patriarchal, very Confucian society that values maleness and age just seems like a step too far. Anna Fai Field, her book is called The Great Successor, the Divinely Perfect Destiny of Brilliant Comrade Kim Jong-Un. Hadimuagdi, also Divinely Perfect, produced today's show. Dolly Myers edited, Patrick Boyden, David Tadishore engineered. Gabriel Dunatov, check the facts. I'm Noelle King. It's today explained. Feel like you're being told to wave a magic AI wand and everything will just get better?

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