North Korea. The woman’s physical proximity to Kim—she sat next to him at the concert—generated intense buzz in South Korean and U.S. media about her identity and role. The regime later identified her as Kim’s wife, “Comrade Ri Sol Ju,” during coverage of Kim and Ri’s visit to the Rungra People’s Pleasure Ground, where they walked arm in arm, waving at bathing-suit-clad pleasure seekers at the new amusement park. The way Ri looked was also a striking departure from past practices. Kim’s grandfather had once decried “make-up,” “hair-curlers,” “pretty dresses,” and “fancy hats” as distracting to the revolutionary struggle, even as he made contradictory demands that “women should be feminine after all.” And under the rule of Kim Jong Il, it was illegal for women to wear trousers when not at work or even to ride bicycles, reminiscent of nineteenth-century American and European beliefs that bicycling was too sexual for women, violated gender norms, and contributed to female liberation.
In 2012, when analysts were piecing together Kim’s background, fragmentary information made it even more difficult to cobble together a coherent narrative about Ri, with rumor and speculation further clouding whatever meager facts might be available. According to information gathered by the South Korean government, Ri was born in 1989 and married Kim in 2009. Like his father, Kim had apparently married an entertainer. Ri was reportedly a member of the Unhasu Orchestra, an elite troupe composed of members who are handpicked by the state for looks, loyalty, and talent. She came from a “normal home” and went to South Korea in 2005 as a cheerleader to support North Korean athletes.
If Kim Jong Un’s intention was to create buzz and elicit commentary about Ri to show that he was determined to change the impression of North Korea as a bleak, threatening, and authoritarian dictatorship, he succeeded. Her youth, attractiveness, and fashion sense inspired reams of media coverage. Given the paucity of information about her, it was impossible not to focus on how she looked. The comparison to other prominent women was inevitable. Was she evoking the storied elegance of Jackie Kennedy? Was she taking fashion cues from Kate Middleton, the Duchess of Cambridge? At the July 2012 concert, she wore a smart, short black skirt and matching jacket, and her cropped bob made her look decidedly modern. When touring the water park, she wore a bright green blouse with a fitted skirt and peep-toe black pumps—“She is stylish indeed!” declared The Huffington Post. There she is in 2014, watching a flight contest among commanding officers of the Korean People’s Air Force: Her longer hair is partly pulled back, her lipstick is a muted pink shade, and she is wearing a blue dress and three-quarter-length suit jacket embellished with a sparkly brooch.
In a sea of men wearing beige military uniforms or dark suits, her colorful attire provided a dramatic—and pleasant—contrast.
LIVING THE NORTH KOREAN DREAM
Given the highly orchestrated nature of the North Korean regime, both its portrayal of Ri and her unusually visible role are almost certainly not accidental. Ri’s unabashed femininity, her fashion choices, modern style, and relationship with her husband are probably reflections of existing trends in North Korean society, how Kim Jong Un sees himself and his country’s place in the world, and his vision for the future. In using Ri as a representation of those ideals, as an aspirational figure, and shaping her persona so soon after Kim ascended to power, it seemed that he was literally and figuratively grooming her to be Pyongyang’s First Lady.
For decades, the regime extolled Kim Il Sung’s mother, Kang Pan Sok, and Kim Jong Il’s mother, Kim Jong Suk, as the embodiment of the North Korean feminine ideal. As Korea scholars Bronwen Dalton, Kyungja Jung, and Jacqueline Willis have articulated in their fascinating article on fashion and the social construction of femininity in North Korea, these two women “are eulogized as both passionate revolutionary fighters and the epitome of self-sacrificing and loving mothers.” Kang’s importance is linked to the fact that she gave birth to the nation, figuratively and literally, by being the mother of Kim Il Sung. Kim Jong Suk’s role is that of a woman who not only nurtured Kim Jong Il but also served to reinforce her son’s military-first ideology. Kang is usually shown in regime hagiography wearing native Korean dress, while Kim Jong Il’s mother is shown in a military uniform—appropriately feminized with a skirt and cinched waist—to symbolize the revolution.