For the first time, the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, showed his daughter in public in the images of the ICBM test. The state news agency KCNA limited itself to reporting that Kim “personally supervised” the launch “together with his beloved daughter and his wife”, the North Korean first lady Ri Sol-ju, without providing further details on the young woman. Five photos among the twenty snapshots published by KCNA, from the test the day before, show a girl dressed in a white coat listening to her father as he appears to be giving instructions to the officials around her, contemplating from afar with Kim the missile taking off or walking hand in hand with him beside the projectile shuttle before launch.
North Korean state media rarely broadcast information about close relatives of the Kim dynasty, which has ruled the country with an iron fist since the 1940s. This daughter of Kim Jong-un is no exception, as official propaganda had never even acknowledged her existence before her. All information about the descendants of Kim Jong-un, who is believed to be 38, has been speculated by outside experts with connections in the country. Many have assured that Kim would have had three children with Ri – in 2010, 2012 or 2013 and 2017 – without being able to provide much more information about it. After one of his extravagant visits to North Korea to meet Kim Jong-un, former US basketball player Dennis Rodman publicly stated in 2013 that he was holding his “daughter Ju-ae”, a baby at the time. It was the only time anyone called one of the North Korean dictator’s descendants by name. It is not known whether the girl in the photos posted on KCNA is the aforementioned Kim Ju-ae or an older sister of hers.
Meanwhile, after the test of an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of reaching the US continental territory, an American B-1B strategic bomber was redeployed on the Korean peninsula for a joint US-South Korea air exercise. The military reported of Seoul, according to which “South Korea and the United States today conducted a joint air exercise with the US Air Force B-1B strategic bomber re-presented on the Korean peninsula”.