Kim Yo Jong Become A Powerful Politician As Chaos Rock The Koreans

About 2 years ago the youngest child of former North Korean leader Kim Jong Il had already made history by becoming the first member of her family since the end of the Korean War to set foot in the southern half of the Korean Peninsula.

According to CNN, Way back February 10, 2018, Kim Yo Jong took her first step to becoming the powerful politician her father thought she would be.

The night before, she had attended the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea. She sat behind South Korean President Moon Jae-in and watched as hundreds of athletes marched together under a flag representing a unified Korea, a country carved in half in the aftermath of World War II by the Soviet Union and the United States with little regard for the thousands of families that were split apart.

Kim applauded these athletes alongside dignitaries like Moon, US Vice President Mike Pence and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe. It was a tremendous photo op. But a trip to the Blue House, South Korea's presidential residence, was a whole different ball game.

Kim Yo Jong would be the first member of North Korea's ruling family ever to enter the halls of power of a sworn enemy.

The morning after the opening ceremony, Kim exited a black sedan to enter the Blue House. She ambled down a red carpet with immaculate posture and her head held high, exuding the confidence of a woman who had been meeting important world leaders for years. She dressed all in black and clutched a black briefcase in her left hand, dark tones that all drew attention to the red lapel pin over her heart emblazoned with the faces of her smiling father and grandfather.

As she approached the building's threshold, she paused and, out of the corner of her eye, looked to her left. Then she slowed her gait to allow the man by her side -- a nonagenarian named Kim Yong Nam who was North Korea's ceremonial head of state at the time -- to enter first, adhering to Confucian values of respecting one's elders despite the fact her family is revered with near religious fervour back home.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in, left, shakes hands with Kim Yo Jong, North Korea leader Kim Jong Un's sister.

Kim Yo Jong was North Korea's chief propagandist at the time, and her ability to craft an image was on full display in Seoul. She proved to be the perfect emissary for her country: a savvy, urbane operator who could counter the narrative of her homeland as a strange, backward, nuclear-armed relic of the Cold War that allegedly holds more than 100,000 people in forced labour camps.

Park Ji-won, a former South Korean lawmaker and presidential chief-of-staff, said after four meetings with Kim Yo Jong, he came away with the impression of a woman whose intelligence and quiet confidence was beyond her years.

"She takes after her father and brother," said Park. "She is very smart and quick thinking. She is courteous, yet speaks her position clearly."

Kim left after three days and would be credited for helping lay the ground work for the first summit between Moon and her older brother, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un. She was, after all, the one who extended his invitation.

But the trip also set the stage for something else, a development that's only become clear in the past several days: that Kim Yo Jong was about to become the boss when it came to North Korea's relations with South Korea and arguably the second-most powerful figure in her country, answerable only to Kim Jong Un.

At 1 a.m. on May 31 this year, the "Fighters for a Free North Korea" gathered on the southern side of the border, near the demilitarized zone that divides the Korean peninsula in two.

The group of North Korean defectors had hoped that by meeting in the middle of the night, they would avoid the prying eyes of nearby police, soldiers or passers-by who might take issue with what they were about to do.

They were on a mission to bring information about the outside world to their former countrymen. North Koreans are forbidden from consuming any information that's not approved by Pyongyang's strict censorship apparatus.

The defectors, led by a man who himself was once targeted by a North Korean assassin wielding a pen armed with poison, stuffed 20 large balloons with 500,000 leaflets, 500 booklets and 1,000 SD cards filled with content that would surely infuriate Kim Jong Un's top advisers.

Then they let the balloons float into the sky, anticipating that as the sun rose, the wind would push the contraband toward their former home.

Officials in Pyongyang were irate. Information about the outside world is like a virus within North Korea, something that can spread quickly and shatter a society built on a veneer of the Kim family as peerless demigods.

"What scares North Korea the most is the truth about themselves, the truth about their regime, the truth about the outside world," said Chun Yung-woo, a former South Korean diplomat. Chun led his country's delegation at the Six Party Talks, a multilateral effort to get North Korea to denuclearize, from 2006 to 2008.

Any insults against the Kims are tantamount to blasphemy, Chun explained, and require a full-throated response.

That responsibility fell to Kim Yo Jong.

Kim said the leaflets were a direct violation of the agreement reached at the Inter-Korean summit in April 2018, the very meeting she laid the groundwork for during her Olympic visit. As part of the deal, both leaders agreed to cease "all hostile acts and eliminating their means, including broadcasting through loudspeakers and distribution of leaflets" along their shared border.

The text did not differentiate between government-led campaigns and those spearheaded by private individuals, and the distinction was thought of as irrelevant inside North Korea. Kim ordered North Korea to cut off all communication with South Korea, including a hotline meant to directly connect the leaders of the two countries.

She demanded the South Korean government punish the defectors, whom she called "betrayers," "human scum" and "riffraff who dared hurt the absolute prestige of our Supreme Leader representing our country and its great dignity," according to a statement carried by North Korean state news agency KCNA.

The South Korean government said it has asked police to investigate the defectors, but muzzling them could set a bad precedent in a liberal democracy where citizens enjoy freedom of speech.

However, it became clear this week that North Korea was truly upset.

Thirty months ago, on that brisk February day when Kim Yo Jong walked into the Blue House, she thanked Moon Jae-in for caring if she was too cold at the opening ceremony and writing in the residence guest book that she looked forward to a "future of unified prosperity."