The day before yesterday, North Korea presented a series of stamps in which Kim Ju Ae, the daughter of Kim Jong Un, appears. They will be released tomorrow. It is one more step in the glorification of the girl, of indeterminate age (nine or ten years) due to the usual secrecy in that country. The first time she was seen in public was last November, at a missile launch ceremony. She has since appeared four more times.
The qualifiers that the official media apply to him allow us to detect how he ascends in the ranks. First they called her “the beloved daughter” but now she is already “the respected daughter”, an adjective reserved for the most honorable members of North Korean high society and which allows us to calculate that she will be the successor of her father.
To finish clinching this calculation comes the news that the authorities have ordered women called Ju Ae to change their names immediately. (In the Korean name day, the name comes at the end.) It is a tradition in that country that the people chosen to lead it have one that they do not share with anyone, so that it is easier to idolize them. It happened with the founder of that monarchist-Marxist dynasty, the Eternal President Kim Il Sung. All the Il Sung were forced to call themselves something else. With the Dear Leader Kim Jong Il and with the Respected Comrade Kim Jong Un, the same thing happened. That now it happens with the women called Ju Ae makes things quite clear.
I only know one Korean, but he’s a man, a cellist, and he was born south of the 38th parallel, so he’s never been in that position. I also know a man from Tarragona, named Alejandro, who is not Korean but who is a special delegate of the Cultural Relations Committee of that salty country. I am surprised that they have not yet asked him what he thinks of this matter that should already be on the cover of Hello! or, failing that, of En Blau.
