A year ago, a school-age girl in a puffy white winter coat held her father’s hand to stroll past a weapon designed to obliterate an American city, and set a new course for North Korea’s propaganda apparatus.
The girl is the daughter of Kim Jong Un, who made her debut at the test of an intercontinental ballistic missile designed to deliver a nuclear warhead to the U.S. mainland. No other child of a North Korean leader had ever been shown in such a fashion at such an early age, and her appearance broke the tradition of keeping the leader’s children out of the public’s eye until they were a part of the state’s apparatus.
She has been dubbed the "respected daughter” and "beloved child” by state media, which has yet to reveal her actual name — thought to be Ju Ae. South Korea’s spy agency has pegged her age at about 10 and believes her to be the second of three children between Kim and his wife, Ri Sol Ju.