Kim Jong-Un's aunt re-appears in public for first time after her husband's execution six years ago

The picture, released by state media, shows Kim Kyong-hui (far right) next to Kim Jong-Un and his wife
AP
Ewan Somerville26 January 2020

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s aunt has been seen in public for the first time in six years.

Kim Kyong-hui is the daughter of the regime’s founder Kim Il-sung. Its current dictator Kim Jong-Un is her nephew.

She had vanished from the public eye since 2013, when her husband was brutally murdered on her nephew's orders for “acts of treachery”.

But state news agency KCNA released a picture of her clapping along to Lunar New Year celebrations on Sunday, sat beside the North Korean leader's wife.

Jhang Song-thaek was hoisted out of a meeting by armed guards and ordered in court to death in December 2013
AFP via Getty Images

It answers rumbling speculation that she had followed the fate of her husband Jang Song-thaek, who was dramatically hoisted from a meeting by armed guards and reportedly fed to ravenous dogs for an alleged plots against the regime.

Oliver Hotham, editor of HK News, a website documenting events in the closed nation, said the appearance comes as a shock.

“Many North Korea watchers had assumed that Kim Kyong Hui had gone into exile or even killed in the wake of her husband’s death, so to see her pop up by the leader’s side some six years later is certainly a surprise,” he told Reuters.

She may have “regained an influential position behind the scenes”, he suggested, after the couple’s dramatic fall from grace as among the most powerful figures in the North when young Kim took over as supreme leader in 2011.

Mr Hotham added: “It’s also a reminder of how weird and brutal North Korea is, after all she’s sitting next to the man who ordered her husband’s execution.”

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