regime also elevated the status of his mother, Ko Yong Hui, calling her “Our Respected Mother” to cement her position and Kim Jong Un’s legitimacy by anchoring the young leader in history and biology. The regime downplayed Ko’s problematic background—she was born in Japan, which would make her less “pure” and of a low status in the revered songbun classification system, not to mention the fact that she was Kim Jong Il’s third wife. Instead the regime mythologized Ko in 2011, with a documentary on her life. The film shows Ko as a woman who waits for her son to come home from school, knits sweaters, and is good with guns. “The mother role embodies the symbolic roles women should play for the nation,” the Korea researcher Darcie Draudt wrote, and Ko’s importance was in her ability to “reproduce Kim Jong-il in the form of Kim Jong-un (a form that extends from Kim Il-sung) that makes her an esteemed citizen worthy of praise.” According to the historian Suzy Kim, the mother becomes an “ideal, selfless public servant, a model for everyone in the North Korean nation to follow in performing their social duties.”
Although the elevation of Ri is consistent with the regime’s construction of femininity, she looks different from the revolutionary, militaristic motherhood portrayal of the previous Kim women figures. Placing her in the current North Korean narrative suggests that she serves Kim Jong Un’s priorities and preferences, consistent with his desire not only to hew closely to the legacies of his father and his grandfather but also to create his own brand for the twenty-first century.
In their article, Dalton, Jung, and Willis argued that “the ongoing collapse of the command economy, the emergence of capitalism, increasing exposure to foreign pop culture and the growth of a new moneyed elite are influencing the construction of femininity in ways that depart from earlier state prescribed and policed ideals.” As Kim Jong Un sought to craft an alternative narrative of North Korea as a modern, prosperous country and built physical structures like water parks and ski resorts to reinforce that vision, Ri provided a walking advertisement for his program. Her glamour, esteemed position (in April 2018, the regime declared her “Revered First Lady”), and complete devotion to her husband made her an aspirational figure for elite and ordinary North Koreans to adore and mimic. Ri’s role as the First Wife provides Kim the gravitas and grounding as a married man in a society in which an unmarried man would still be considered a boy, as Draudt observed.
The couple, walking hand in hand, waving at adoring North Korean citizens and holding squirming babies (not their own) at a nursery, cut a compelling image of youth, vigor, and confidence. Her colorful outfits, sparkling accessories, and effervescence reinforced that image of hope. John Park, a Korea expert at Harvard University, likened Kim and Ri as protagonists in a North Korean version of Camelot—the much-admired world of the youthful John F. Kennedy and his graceful wife, Jacqueline, that encapsulated so much of post–World War II optimism. “There’s this idea of a North Korean dream, and Kim Jong Un being the creator of this dream and his wife, Ri Sol Ju, being essentially the face of this dream,” he explained. “This type of dynamic is sort of an analogy for the future of North Korea overall.”
That future of North Korea includes the fulfillment of byungjin, the dual-track policy of developing both nuclear weapons and the economy. Ri appears with her husband in a wide variety of locations: military facilities, construction sites, factories, manufacturing plants, schools, and orphanages. During the peak of tensions with the United States, in October 2017, Kim still found time to tour a cosmetics factory in Pyongyang with his wife. A smiling, appreciative Kim praised the “world-class” products and their packaging, as his wife primly looked on, observing the machines and displays. The regime’s showcasing of his ability to pivot from threatening war to inspecting women’s makeup, with his wife at his side, suggests that it was seeking to show the complementarity—indeed, the necessity—of nuclear weapons to North Korea’s prosperity and that the people can have both, as Kim has been promising since he came to power. Ri’s presence underscores that message, given her place as an aspirational figure.
Ri as First Lady also provides an opportunity for the regime to channel the consumerist energies of the North Korean people, especially nonelite women who fill the formal and informal markets while their husbands