By now, many of us will have seen the rumors regarding North Korea's Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un, 36, circulating on our newsfeeds.
But with the world left in the dark about the specifics, many people are looking at those closest to the political leader, namely, his younger sister, Kim Yo-jong.
The politician - believed to be around 31-years-old - is the youngest daughter of North Korea's former supreme leader Kim Jong-il and is an alternate member of the Politburo and vice director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers' Party of Korea.
Per the Express, she is considered by many to be the most powerful woman in North Korea.
Throughout the 90s, The Washington Post reports that Yo-jong attended school with Kim Jong-un in Berne, Switzerland, where she took ballet lessons before returning home to North Korea in the early 2000s.
Fox News state that not much is known about Yo-jong's life between her time in Switzerland and 2007, when she began playing a role in the ruling party.
But it wasn't until 2018 that Yo-jong gained international attention, as she was photographed during the Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
Per CNN, amid the games, she wrote in a presidential guest book a heartwarming message referring to the capitals of North and South Korea. She reportedly said: "I hope Pyongyang and Seoul get closer in our people's hearts and move forward the future of prosperous unification."
However, last month The Guardian reports that Kim Yo-jong condemned South Korea as a "frightened dog barking" after Seoul protested against a live-fire military demonstration by North Korea. The Guardian also notes that this was Yo-jong's first known official statement, to which she added: "Such incoherent assertion and actions […] only magnify our distrust, hatred, and scorn for the South side as a whole."
Yo-jong is known to be one of her brother’s closest advisers, often photographed either at his side or close by. Forbes reports that she is responsible for pushing North Korean propaganda and protecting her older brother's reputation.
Speaking to the Daily Beast, North Korean expert Bruce Bennett said of Yo-jong: "She is smart, calculating, and who knows how much power she has been able to build working in the shadows?"
So, will Yo-jong take control of North Korea if anything were to happen to her big brother? Well, per the Associated Press, analyst Cheong Seong-Chang said at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea:
"Among the North’s power elite, Kim Yo Jong has the highest chance to inherit power, and I think that possibility is more than 90%.
"North Korea is like a dynasty, and we can view the Paektu descent as royal blood so it’s unlikely for anyone to raise any issue over Kim Yo Jong taking power."
Michael Madden, a government consultant who manages the website North Korea Leadership Watch, once told The New Yorker: "[Yo-jong] has gotten a lot more serious
"When you see footage of her on the receiving lines, she is smiling, a nice friendly young woman, but when she is out of those lines, the smile vanishes and she even looks like Kim Jong Il."
If she were to assume leadership, Yo-jong would be North Korea’s first female ruler since her grandfather Kim Il-sung founded the nation back in 1948.
