SEOUL, March 16, 2024 (BSS/AFP) - North Korean state media on Saturday

referred to leader Kim Jong Un's teenage daughter as a "great person of
guidance", employing a term usually reserved for senior leaders and hinting
at her status as a potential successor, analysts said.

Both the English- and Korean-language versions of an official Korean Central
News Agency report on Kim and his daughter's visit to a greenhouse farm used
the plural form of the honorific, suggesting it applied to both of them.

"The great persons of guidance, together with cadres of the Party, the
government and the military, went round the farm," read the English-language
report, which ran with images of the pair.

Analysts said it was the first time Kim's daughter -- never named by
Pyongyang's state media, but identified as Ju Ae by South Korean intelligence
-- had been described as such by the North.

"This is the first expression of elevating Kim Ju Ae to the ranks of" a
leader, Yang Moo-jin, president of the University of North Korean Studies in
Seoul, told AFP.

The North Korean term "hyangdo" -- meaning guidance -- is typically only
reserved for "top leaders or successors" of the isolated regime, said Cheong
Seong-chang, director of Center for Korean Peninsula Strategy at the Sejong
Institute.

"This level of personal worship for Kim Ju Ae strongly suggests that she will
succeed Kim Jong Un as the next leader of North Korea," Cheong added.

- At Kim's side -

Kim Jong Un -- the grandson of North Korea's founding leader Kim Il Sung and
the third generation of the Kim family to lead the country -- married his
wife Ri Sol Ju in 2009, according to Seoul's spy agency.

Ju Ae was first introduced to the world by Pyongyang's state media in 2022,
when she accompanied her father to the launch of an intercontinental
ballistic missile.

She has since been seen at many of her father's official engagements,
including military drills, a visit to a weapons factory, a stop at a new
chicken farm and a military parade.

In an image released by Pyongyang on Saturday, Ju Ae was seen using
binoculars to observe recent paratroop drills, standing beside her father and
senior military officials.

Prior to 2022, the only confirmation of her existence had come from former
NBA star Dennis Rodman, who made a visit to the North in 2013 and claimed
he'd met a baby daughter of Kim's called Ju Ae.

Seoul had initially indicated that Kim and his wife Ri had their first child,
a boy, in 2010, and that Ju Ae was their second child.

But last year, Seoul's unification minister said that the government was
"unable to confirm for sure" the existence of Kim's son.