By Hal Brown
Correction: I originally used China as part of the title by mistake.
When I first read North Korea Warns U.S. Against ‘Causing A Stink,’ Breaking Silence on HUFFPOST I thought they made a typo and referred to the North Korean as a “she” by mistake. Then I realized I glossed over the first three words in the article. It wasn’t about something Kim Jong Un said, rather it was his sister Kim Yo Jong. Her statements made the international news. This is from HUFPOST:
The sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said Tuesday the United States risked “causing a stink” if it moved forward with joint military drills with South Korea, Pyongyang’s first official diplomatic statement during President Joe Biden’s administration.
Kim Yo Jong, who serves as a spokesperson for Kim on diplomatic issues, condemned the military exercises and hinted that the North could wage some type of retaliation in a statement published in state-run media.
“We take this opportunity to warn the new U.S. administration trying hard to give off powder smell in our land,” Kim Yo Jong said, warning of what she called a “biting wind” later this month. “If it wants to sleep in peace for coming four years, it had better refrain from causing a stink at its first step.”
In actuality the military drill is a computer simulation, but this fact didn’t matter to Kim Yo Jung:
“They say that the drill involves no actual maneuvers with its scale and contents drastically ‘reduced.’ Perhaps, they are expecting ‘flexible judgment’ and ‘understanding’ from us but it is, indeed, ridiculous, impudent and stupid,” Kim said in her statement. “War drill and hostility can never go with dialogue and cooperation.”
This is not the first time she has made the news in a similar way.
So who is this woman? In April of 2020 Newsweek asked the same question. Who is Kim Jong Un's Sister? North Korea Leader's Reported Health Problems Push Kim Yo Jong Into Focus.
According to an article in Forbes she has been called North Korea’s Ivanka Trump. However while she may be like Ivanka was in terms of influence, her persona is very different. This is how The Washington Post put it in The ‘Ivanka Trump of North Korea’ captivates people in the South at the Olympics.
They marveled at her barely-there makeup and her lack of bling. They commented on her plain black outfits and simple purse. They noted the flower-shaped clip that kept her hair back in a no-nonsense style.
Here she was, a political princess, but the North Korean “first sister” had none of the hallmarks of power and wealth that Koreans south of the divide have come to expect. In looks-obsessed South Korea, many 20-something women list plastic surgery and brand-name bags as life goals.
Most of all, Kim Yo Jong was an enigma. Just like them, but nothing like them. A woman with a sphinxlike smile who gave nothing away during her three-day Olympic-related visit to South Korea as brother Kim Jong Un’s special envoy.
“I thought Kim Yo Jong was going to be so serious, but she smiled all the time, so she made a good first impression,” said Kwon Hee-sun, a 29-year-old South Korean woman attending the women’s ice hockey match at the Winter Olympics on Saturday night.
I would add to this comparison that as the chief North Korean propagandist she is also like Trump’s various mouthpieces when it comes to spinning the truth although her language is far more colorful, calling defectors “human scum hardly worth their value as human beings little short of wild animals who betrayed their own homeland” for example.
Here’s a Washington Post article from the time of the Olympics when she was making the news like a beautiful movie star everyone could relate to. The South Korean newspapers marveled at her humbleness.
Then, from the moment she stepped out of the airport, there was a media scrum around her — well, around the four North Korean bodyguards who surrounded her as she walked through train stations and Olympic venues.
When she arrived at the presidential Blue House for a meeting with South Korean President Moon Jae-in on Saturday morning, the cameras zoomed in on her high cheekbones and fine ears. No detail was too trivial to be noticed, to be commented on.
Could she eventually become the leader of North Korea?
Fast forward to 2020:
Excerpt:
The star of the younger sister of North Korea’s leader Kim Jong Un has risen so fast and high in the country’s ruling firmament in 2020 as to make her appear as a stand-in for big brother if not his rival for power.
At 32, four years younger than Jong Un, Kim Yo Jong has made her presence known through shockingly tough statements that he had to have endorsed but she clearly wrote and recommended.
Undoubtedly her most famous—and most effective—blast was her denunciation in June of North Korean defectors for firing off balloons from South Korea laden with leaflets criticizing the North Korean regime.
They were “human scum hardly worth their value as human beings,” “little short of wild animals who betrayed their own homeland,” she raged. It was “time to bring their owners to account” and ask “south (sic) Korean authorities if they are ready to take care of the consequences of evil conduct by the rubbish-like mongrel dogs who took no scruple to slander us while faulting the ‘nuclear issue’ in the meanest way at the most untimely time.”
In April of 2020 The Guardian called her Kim Jong Un’s alter ego.
If this happened and she succeeded her brother it would turn tradition upside-down. The Post tells us that “both Koreas are bound by Confucian hierarchical rules that prize age and maleness and stipulate who should sit where according to seniority.” Consider that when it was rumored that her brother was sick, possibly in a coma, she took over from him. This raises the possibility that — wait for it — sometime in the future the world could see United States with President Ivanka Trump and Supreme Leader Kim Jo Yong.
How weird would it be if President Ivanka, who back in 2018 had applied for16 trademarks (not only clothing but also voting machines) in China visits Beijing for the World Summit of Dictators.
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Related to the poll: What next for Jared Kushner and Ivanka Trump, the most divisive couple in America?