The girl in the frame and an aunt in the shadows: Could North Korea get its first female supreme leader?

Could North Korea get its first female supreme leader? For most of the world, North Korea remains a sealed stage. Apart from routine missile launches, grand military parades and the carefully filtered images released by state media, the inner workings of Pyongyang’s ruling elite remain deeply opaque. Rarely does a single photograph disrupt that familiar script. But recently, one did. On New Year’s Day in 2026, inside the grand Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, where the embalmed bodies of Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il lie in state, Kim Jong Un stood beneath chandeliers and marble arches for a…