SEOUL: North Korea’s ruling party has elevated leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful younger sister to a top position, state media said Tuesday, a sign of her far-reaching influence within the reclusive nation.
Thousands of party elites have packed the capital Pyongyang for a once-in-five-years summit of the ruling Workers’ Party, a gathering that directs state efforts on everything from diplomacy to war planning.
Kim Yo Jong — long considered one of her brother’s closest lieutenants — was promoted to department director within the party’s apex central committee, the Korean Central News Agency said.
Although it was not clear which department she would lead, she has previously held a senior role within the party’s propaganda unit.
Kim Yo Jong has in recent years emerged as one of the most powerful figures in North Korea, playing a highly visible role in diplomacy, nuclear negotiations and other matters of state.
“Kim Yo Jong is one of the very few people Kim Jong Un can trust and rely on,” said Ahn Chan-il, a researcher originally from North Korea.
“She also served as a working-level official for Kim’s summits with Trump in Singapore and Hanoi. She is experienced and seasoned,” he told AFP.
Kim Yo Jong burst on to the international scene in 2018, when she was dispatched to Seoul as North Korea’s envoy for the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics.
With that trip, she became one of the first members of the ruling Kim dynasty to set foot in the South since the Korean War.
Since then she has gained a reputation for her vitriolic denunciations of Washington and Seoul.
She once derided the government of former South Korean president Yoon Suk Yeol as a “faithful dog” of the United States.
Her tone has softened somewhat since South Korea’s incumbent leader Lee Jae Myung — who has sought to mend ties with the North — took office last year.
Kim Yo Jong’s latest advancement “amounts to promotion to ministerial rank,” said Lim Eul-chul from the Institute for Far Eastern Studies at Kyungnam University.
- Rapid rise -
Remarkably little is known about Kim Yo Jong given her prominent role in North Korea’s dealings with the outside world.
Born in 1988, according to the South Korean government, she is one of three children born to Kim’s father and predecessor, Kim Jong Il, and his third known partner, former dancer Ko Yong Hui.
She was educated in Switzerland alongside her brother and rose rapidly up the ranks once he inherited power after their father’s death in 2011.
Pyongyang has never officially disclosed any information about Kim Yo Jong’s marital status or children.
Rare footage released by state media last year showed her attending an art show with two young children.
The Workers’ Party congress offers a rare glimpse into the political workings of reclusive North Korea, and is widely seen as a forum for Kim to flex his grip on power.
It is just the ninth time the gathering has been called to order under North Korea’s decades-spanning Kim dynasty.
There is keen interest in whether the congress might also promote leader Kim Jong Un’s teenage daughter Kim Ju Ae.
Kim Ju Ae has emerged as a clear frontrunner to continue the family dynasty, according to South Korea’s national intelligence service.
US President Donald Trump stepped up his courtship of Kim Jong Un during a tour of Asia last year, saying he was “100 percent” open to a meeting.
But the North Korean leader has so far largely shunned efforts to resume top-level diplomatic dialogue.
North Korea ruling party promotes Kim Jong Un’s younger sister
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North Korea ruling party promotes Kim Jong Un’s younger sister
- North Korea’s ruling party has elevated leader Kim Jong Un’s powerful younger sister to a top position, state media said Tuesday
Afghanistan says it thwarted Pakistani airstrike on Bagram Air Base as fighting enters fourth day
- The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years
- Pakistan accuses Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it
KABUL: Afghanistan thwarted attempted airstrikes on Bagram Air Base, the former US military base north of Kabul, authorities said Sunday, while cross-border fighting between Pakistan and Afghanistan stretched into a fourth day.
The fighting has been the most severe between the neighbors for years, with Pakistan declaring that it’s in “open war” with Afghanistan.
The conflict has alarmed the international community, particularly as the area is one where other militant organizations, including Al-Qaeda and the Daesh group, still have a presence and have been trying to resurface.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of harboring militant groups that stage attacks against it and also of allying with its archrival India.
Border clashes in October killed dozens of soldiers, civilians and suspected militants until a Qatari-mediated ceasefire ended the intense fighting. But several rounds of peace talks in Turkiye in November failed to produce a lasting agreement, and the two sides have occasionally traded fire since then.
On Sunday, the police headquarters of Parwan province, where Bagram is located, said in a statement that several Pakistani military jets had entered Afghan airspace “and attempted to bomb Bagram Air Base” at around 5 a.m.
The statement said Afghan forces responded with “anti-aircraft and missile defense systems” and had managed to thwart the attack.
There was no immediate response from Pakistan’s military or government regarding Kabul’s claim of attempted airstrikes on Bagram or the ongoing fighting.
Bagram was the United States’ largest military base in Afghanistan. It was taken over by the Taliban as they swept across the country and took control in the wake of the chaotic US withdrawal from the country in 2021. Last year, US President Donald Trump suggested he wanted to reestablish a US presence at the base.
The current fighting began when Afghanistan launched a broad cross-border attack on Thursday night, saying it was in retaliation for Pakistani airstrikes the previous Sunday.
Pakistan had said its airstrike had targeted the outlawed Pakistani Taliban, also known as Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan, or TTP. Afghanistan had said only civilians were killed.
The TTP militant group, which is separate but closely allied with Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban, operates inside Pakistan, where it has been blamed for hundreds of deaths in bombings and other attacks over the years.
Pakistan accuses Afghanistan’s Taliban government of providing a safe haven within Afghanistan for the TTP, an accusation that Afghanistan denies.
After Thursday’s Afghan attack, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Mohammad Asif declared that “our patience has now run out. Now it is open war between us.”
In the ongoing fighting, each side claims to have killed hundreds of the other side’s forces — and both governments put their own casualties at drastically lower numbers.
Two Pakistani security officials said that Pakistani ground forces were still in control on Sunday of a key Afghan post and a 32-square-kilometer area in the southern Zhob sector near Kandahar province, after having seized it during fighting Friday. The captured post and surrounding area remain under Pakistani control, they added. The officials spoke on condition of anonymity, because they weren’t authorized to speak publicly.
In Kabul, the Afghan government rejected Pakistan’s claims. Deputy government spokesman Hamdullah Fitrat called the reports “baseless.”
Afghan officials said that fighting had continued overnight and into Sunday in the border areas.
The police command spokesman for Nangarhar province, Said Tayyeb Hammad, said that anti-aircraft missiles were used from the provincial capital, Jalalabad, and surrounding areas on Pakistani fighter jets flying overhead Sunday morning.
Defense Ministry spokesman Enayatulah Khowarazmi said that Afghan forces had launched counterattacks with snipers across the border from Nangarhar, Paktia, Khost and Kandahar provinces overnight. He said that two Pakistani drones had been shot down and dozens of Pakistani soldiers had been killed.
Fitrat said that Pakistani drone attacks hit civilian homes in Nangarhar province late Saturday, killing a woman and a child, while mortar fire killed another civilian when it hit a home in Paktia province.
There was no immediate response to the claims from Pakistani officials.
