The South Korean news media call her “North Korea’s first sister” or “Kim Jong-un’s Ivanka,” likening her influence with her brother to that of Ivanka Trump’s on her father, President Trump. The North’s state news media often shows top-ranking officials listening reverentially when she speaks.
Ms. Kim was blacklisted by the United States Treasury in January 2017 over allegations of involvement in “serious human rights abuses and censorship activities.”
The Family Tree
Ms. Kim is Mr. Kim’s only sister. They have an older brother, Kim Jong-chol, who has never been seen in the North Korean media and whose role, if any, remains a mystery. He was last spotted at an Eric Clapton concert in London in 2015.
The siblings’ mother was Ko Yong-hui, who was born in Japan but later immigrated with her family to North Korea, where she became a famous singer and dancer. Ms. Ko was Kim Jong-il’s third wife; she died of cancer in a Paris hospital in 2004. Ms. Kim and her brothers studied in Switzerland as teenagers.
Their older half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, was killed in an airport in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, in February 2017 by two women who smeared his face with a nerve agent. The women, who are on trial, were said to have been hired by North Korean agents who analysts said were sent by Kim Jong-un to eliminate a potential threat to his grip on power.
A Historic Meeting
Ms. Kim is the first member of North Korea’s ruling family to visit the South since the 1950-53 Korean War. The trip comes at a time of heightened tensions over the North’s nuclear weapons and missile development program.
In 2000, her father, Kim Jong-il, held a summit meeting in North Korea with Kim Dae-jung, then South Korea’s president, but he did not keep his promise to visit the South for a second meeting. In 2007, Roh Moo-hyun, then the South’s president, visited North Korea for the second inter-Korean summit meeting.
It was unclear whether Mr. Kim was sending a message to Mr. Moon through his sister. Mr. Moon has said he is willing to meet Mr. Kim if he is reasonably sure that such a meeting would help end the crisis over the North’s nuclear weapons and missile development program.
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