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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un's wife, Ri Sol-ju, and sister Kim Yo-jong seen as potential rivals
One has a following among elite while other holds a senior party position
PUBLISHED : Tuesday, 27 January, 2015, 3:27am
UPDATED : Tuesday, 27 January, 2015, 3:27am
Bloomberg in Seoul, South Korea
Kim Jong-un and Ri Sol-ju (left) and Kim Yo-jong. Photos: EPA, SCMP Pictures
One sports a Christian Dior handbag and favours Western clothes. The other carries a notebook and wears dark uniforms. These are the two most influential women in North Korea.
While Kim Jong-un's wife Ri Sol-ju and younger sister Kim Yo-jong are currently allies in sustaining one of the world's most reclusive leaders, their overlapping influence makes them potential rivals in a regime where family ties aren't strong enough to protect against Kim's penchant for purges.
Ri commands a growing following among the wives of North Korean elite while Kim Yo-jong now holds a senior position in the ruling Workers' Party and serves as an adviser to her brother. "Uneasiness is inevitable in a relationship like this," Kang Myong-do, a son-in-law of North Korea's former prime minister, Kang Song-san, said by phone.
"The wife wouldn't like it if her husband got too close to his sister; the sister wouldn't like it if her brother got too close to his wife."
The sister would try to oust Ri if the first lady - a "rag-tag commoner" compared to Kim Yo-jong - sought political power beyond the role of burnishing her husband's public image, said Kang, who now teaches North Korean studies at Kyungmin University near Seoul.
Kim Yo-jong chooses to remain in her brother's shadow at public events, while Ri locks arms with Kim Jong-un. In a photo released on January 21 by the state-run Rodong Sinmun newspaper, Kim Yo-jong hides behind a pole as she watches the back of her brother speaking to people at a shoe factory.
Still, Kim Yo-jong "has a lot of control over who has access to her brother, what they say to him, what documents they hand over - in short, she is a combination of gatekeeper and traffic cop," said Michael Madden, who is the editor of the North Korea Leadership Watch blog.
She joined her brother in handing out awards to troops at an air force competition in May and that suggests she commands the party's Organisation and Guidance Department, which handles everything from promotions to purges, Cheong Seong-chang, a senior analyst at the Sejong Institute near Seoul, said in an email.
Kim's sister remained out of the public eye until she was spotted on state television at her father's funeral in a black mourning dress. In footage shown less than a year later, she was riding a white horse alongside her aunt Kim Kyong-hui.
The aunt hasn't been seen in public since her husband, Jang Song-thaek, was executed by his nephew in December 2013 after accusations of graft and factionalism had been levelled.
The purge of Jang may have also strengthened the hand of Ri with the North Korean elite looking to avoid a similar fate. There are accounts that the wives of North Korean elite used their ties to Ri to "limit the number of officials removed from office due to the Jang purge", Madden said.
"What we'll need to watch for is whether Ri Sol-ju becomes Queen Bee among the wives or if that role is assumed by Yo-jong," he said in an email. "They are a quiet but politically influential cohort in the North Korean elite."
