The daughter of the North Korean leader Kim Jong Un more and more often she appears in photos in luxurious clothes of Western designers, which are banned in North Korea because they are considered reactionary and anti-socialist.
It’s not teenage rebellion, however, but rather Kim Joo Ae’s fashion choices – leather pieces, a looser hairstyle with bangs over her forehead, and even a see-through blouse – indicate she’s preparing to succeed the supreme leader.
According to available data, she was born in 2013, and she made her official debut at the age of nine, in November 2022, when walked with her father next to a huge intercontinental ballistic missile.
Even then, she was dressed to make a strong impression – wearing black trousers and a white fitted jacket, her long hair tied back in a loose ponytail.
Since then, her hairstyle has become more and more stylized, and her outfits more and more elegant and sophisticated.
In 2020, North Korea adopted the Law on the Rejection of Reactionary Ideology and Culture, which prohibited the “influence of foreign culture”.
However, in 2023, the state-run KCNA news agency released footage of Zhu Ae again walking with her father next to an ICBM, this time wearing a black fitted jacket later found to be from the collection of luxury French fashion house Christian Dior and costing $1,900.
The following year, Ju Ae appeared in a blouse with see-through sleeves at the completion ceremony of a housing complex in Pyongyang.
A video was then released warning that her hairstyle and outfit were “anti-socialist and non-socialist phenomena that cloud the image of the socialist system and undermine the regime, which must be eradicated,” a source close to the North Korean leadership told Radio Free Asia.
Yet now some in North Korea reportedly want to emulate her sophisticated style.
“Times have changed and significant generational changes have taken place,” Joong Eun Lee, head of the North Korea Research Department at the Korea Institute for National Unification, told the BBC’s Korea Service.
“Since 2010, the number of workers who go abroad to earn foreign currency has increased significantly.”
During the coronavirus pandemic, nearly 2,000 North Korean workers remained in China.
And “when they returned to (the capital) Pyongyang… they also brought Chinese culture.”
“In the past, luxury products were mostly limited to Japanese brands brought by Koreans from Japan (who were encouraged to move to North Korea on so-called repatriation ships during the 1960s and 1970s, often under false pretenses.
“They were descendants of people who went to Japan, sometimes for forced labor, during the Japanese rule on the Korean Peninsula from 1910 to 1945).
“Today, however, North Koreans seem to be familiar with a variety of foreign brands.”
“Since bags and clothes (even though they are smuggled into North Korea) are too expensive, it seems that people are starting to use perfume.”
Watch the video: What’s behind the fashion choices of Kim Jong Un’s daughter
However, Zhu Ae is not the first fashion icon in her family.
“Ju Ae seems to dress like her mother Ri Sol Ju, and wears women’s suits to hide her age,” Chong Song-chang, deputy director of the Sejong Institute in South Korea, told the BBC Korea Service.
“A young woman leading fashion trends with sophisticated western-style clothing?”
“That is almost unthinkable in North Korea.”
“By wearing western designer clothes, Joo Ae and Ri Sol Joo demonstrate a ‘strategy of differentiation’, that is, their social status is fundamentally different from that of ordinary residents.
“Joo Ae and Ri Sol Joo can do this without any worry because they have a privileged position.”
However, Zhu Ae’s fashion style does not only come from her mother.
“Although jeans are banned in North Korea as a Western fashion item, Kim Jong Un wore them,” says Professor Lee Woo-yong of the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul.
“No matter how much they ban foreign culture and even pass laws, North Korea is a place where there is nothing the supreme leader can’t do.”
Joo Ae has repeatedly worn leather jackets, which shows that the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea is doing a good job of setting her apart from ordinary residents, Chong said.
“Wearing clothes made of high-quality leather means highlighting a special status,” he says.
“Leather clothing is not that common among North Koreans.”
“Luxury brands, leather jackets and fur coats are precious pieces of clothing that ordinary residents cannot wear.”
And copying the fashion style of previous generations is used to keep leaders in power.
Thus, in the early period of his reign, Kim Jong Un also sought to establish legitimacy by emulating Kim Il Sung’s grandfather, and wore a similar hat and coat during a tour of Farm No. 1116 in May 2015.
“North Korea’s Propaganda and Agitation Department played an extremely important role in devising a series of procedures by which respect for Kim Il Sung (who founded and led North Korea for more than 45 years) was naturally transferred to Kim Jong Un,” Chong says.
“It is said that the people of North Korea were surprised when Kim Jong Un first appeared.
“And the reason South Korean experts were also surprised is that Kim Jong Un looked so much like a young Kim Il Sung at first glance.”
“The limitations that the young Kim Jong Un faced as an heir, such as his lack of experience and his youth, could only be offset by the fact that he resembled Kim Il Sung.”
“It was so unreal that there were rumors among North Koreans that Kim Il Sung had reincarnated.”
“In North Korea, Kim Il Sung is practically a deity,” says Professor Chung Yong-tae of Dongyang University in South Korea.
And that adoration has been passed down through the generations – to Kim Jong Un and now to Ju Ae.
Ju Ae is already known as “Princess” in North Korea, and that title itself is a reference to the divine bloodline of her ancestors.
Watch a video about Kim Yo Jong, Kim Jong Un’s sister
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