SEOUL —
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un oversaw a test of
Pyongyang’s newest intercontinental ballistic missile with his daughter in tow
for the first time, state media reported Saturday.
اضافة اعلان
Declaring he would
meet perceived US nuclear threats with nukes of his own, Kim supervised the
launch on Friday of the black-and-white missile, which the official
Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said was the Hwasong-17 — dubbed the “monster
missile” by analysts.
The launch of the
“new major strategic weapon system” was successful, KCNA said.
KCNA said Kim
attended the launch “together with his beloved daughter and wife”, and state
media images showed a beaming Kim accompanied by a young girl in a puffer
jacket and red shoes as he walked in front of the missile.
North Korean state
media has never mentioned Kim’s children, and this was the first official
confirmation that he had a daughter, experts said.
KCNA’s report on
Saturday did not name the daughter, however.
‘The fourth
generation’
The most significant takeaway from Friday’s ICBM launch is “the permanence
of the Kim regime’s weapons program, because it is so integral to Kim’s own
survival and the continuity of his family’s reign”, Soo Kim, a former CIA
analyst now with the RAND Corporation, told AFP.
With the state
media coverage, “we have seen with our own eyes the fourth generation of the
Kim family”, she said.
Kim — 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
South Korea’s spy agency.
She gave birth to
their first child the following year, with their second and third born in 2013
and 2017, the agency has said.
The only previous
confirmation of the children’s existence had come from former NBA star Dennis
Rodman, who claimed he met a baby daughter of Kim’s called Ju Ae during a 2013
visit to North Korea.
The daughter
revealed in the photographs is presumed to be Ju Ae, who is likely Kim’s second
child, Cheong Seong-chang of the Center for North Korea Studies at the Sejong
Institute in South Korea told AFP.
Read more Region and World
Jordan News
.jpg)
.jpg)
