PYONGYANG: North Korean leader Kim Jong Un revealed his daughter to the world for the first time in striking photos showing the pair hand-in-hand before the launch of the nuclear-armed country’s largest ballistic missile the day before.
North Korea test-fired a Hwasong-17 intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) on Friday.
A surprising addition to the launch was the presence of Kim’s daughter, whose existence had never been publicly confirmed before.
Her unexpected appearance raises the prospect that leadership of the totalitarian state could pass to the fourth generation of Kims and suggests that nuclear weapons will be part of that inheritance, analysts said.
KCNA did not name the girl, who is seen in photographs in a white puffy coat holding hands with her father as they looked at the massive missile.
This picture, released by North Korea’s official Korean Central News on Saturday, shows North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un with his daughter as he inspects a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) “Hwasong
“This is the first observed occasion where we have seen Kim Jong Un’s daughter at a public event,” said Michael Madden, a North Korea leadership expert at the US-based Stimson Center.
“It is highly significant and represents a certain degree of comfort on Kim Jong Un’s part that he would bring her out in public in such fashion,” he added.
Jenny Town of 38 North, a Washington-based North Korea research organisation, said that Kim’s taking his daughter to an ICBM test and publishing pictures of the two of them watching the launch suggests he is not about to bow to pressure to slow his weapons programmes or return to negotiations.
