The Sister: North Korea’s Kim Yo Jong, the Most Dangerous Woman in the World by Sung-Yoon Lee is a dramatic account of the influence Kim Jong Un’s sister has in the day-to-day functioning of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea. This mysteriously silent shadow to her Superior Leader brother is a modern-day mouse that roared. The author explains that while she may not appear high on any state political hierarchy, by virtue of her birth–as part of the Kim dynasty’s sacred Mount Paektu bloodline–she is really her country’s second-in-command.
Since her ascent to the position as her brother’s right-hand woman, Yo Jong has upped the degree of vitriol levelled at the DPRK’s enemies, namely the United States and the Republic of Korea. The author has probably used “snark” more often than in any other book I have read. He uses that word to describe her trademark verbal attacks. Yo Jong’s name-calling, racism (against Obama), homophobia (against gay Australian judge Michael Kirby who was investigating DPRK human rights abuses) and even sexism (against ROK President Park Geun-hye) all reveal a style of attack never before seen in DPRK official statements. I have read plenty of insults hurled at the US and ROK over the decades, all of them employing the same tired terms such as “puppets”, “flunkies”, “stooges” and “dogs”, but never such personal attacks on individual people as this.
Lee wrote about the South being mesmerized by her presence at state visits and at international events like the 2018 Winter Olympics. Yo Jong represented a gentler face to the Kim dynasty and perhaps was a new image the country was trying to project to the world. Yet looks are deceiving, and Yo Jong is already a learned master of manipulation. A rare woman in the DPRK inner circle, who by virtue of her sex alone commands international attention, Yo Jong knows how to charm her enemies to get what she wants and then rips the rug out from under their feet immediately after. Lee makes several cases for this in regards to Yo Jong’s main enemy, South Korea. After the South released hundreds of propaganda balloons over the border, in retaliation for this act Yo Jong persuaded that government to declare that sending the balloons over the border was illegal. Get this: making it illegal in the South to do this. Unbelievable. The South were persuaded to pass a law banning balloons like this in order to keep the North happy. With the North conducting dozens of missile tests, including ICBM’s, you’ve got to give them what they want, even if it compromises your own country’s sovereignty.
Lee wrote a thrilling book about a merciless woman who may very well be the next in line to the Supreme Leader Kim Jong Un. The author tended to tell the same story about Yo Jong’s unhinged behaviour as she met diplomats and discussed reunification policy. Instead of numbing the reader into a state of complacency from a paper tigress, it made me shudder to think that if she assumed the ultimate power, she could indeed threaten another war on the peninsula.