Kim Yo Jong was rarely seen in public before 2010, when she was pictured in attendance at a Korean Workers’ party conference. Although, it was arguably her appointment as deputy director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the country’s ruling party in 2014 that significantly boosted her national profile.
Believed to be in her late twenties, Kim Yo Jong has frequently accompanied her brother on various “field guidance trips” as well as to other political events. She has operated in a number of political roles in the one-party state and her latest promotion appears to have been made in order to strengthen the position of Kim Jong Un’s family within the regime’s leadership.
Liker her brother, Kim Yo Jong also studied in Switzerland, reportedly attending the International School of Berne. She is then believed to have studied computer science at Kim Il-sung University in North Korea.
Kim Yo Jong and Kim Jong Un both have the same mother — Ko Yang Hui, a former dancer born in Japan who was a partner of Kim Jong Il, who died in 2011.
The U.S. Treasury Department blacklisted Kim Yo Jong in January, alongside six other North Korean individuals, for supporting human rights abuses as well as other censorship activities in the isolated state.
