North Korean leader Kim Jong Un distributed ceremonial sniper rifles to the country’s most senior party and military officials on Friday in a choreographed ritual closing out the Ninth Congress of the Workers’ Party of Korea, as state media simultaneously published photographs of his teenage daughter Kim Ju Ae firing the weapon at a shooting range, the latest in a succession of carefully staged appearances that South Korea’s intelligence services now assess as preparation for a formal transfer of dynastic power to the fourth generation of the Kim family.
Kim presented the rifles to senior cadres and commanding officers at the Workers’ Party of Korea headquarters in Pyongyang, describing them as a sign of his “absolute trust” and gratitude for their commitment and service over the five years since the previous congress in 2021.
The weapons were developed by North Korea’s Academy of Defence Science, the state body responsible for the country’s weapons development programmes, including its ballistic missile and nuclear warhead projects. “As was already made public, this new-generation sniper’s rifle our Academy of Defence Science developed and produced is really a wonderful weapon,” Kim was quoted as saying by the Korean Central News Agency.
State media photographs, which could not be independently verified as independent journalists were denied access, showed Kim himself test-firing the rifle at a shooting range before the distribution ceremony.
Ju Ae, wearing a brown leather coat closely matching her father’s, was photographed aiming the weapon with smoke visible rising from the barrel, in images that KCNA clearly intended as a centrepiece of the congress’s closing coverage.
The congress ran for seven days and concluded Wednesday in Pyongyang, making it the most significant political gathering in North Korea since the Eighth Congress in January 2021, an event held every five years since 2016 and designed as a carefully choreographed spectacle of elite solidarity before thousands of party delegates.
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A military parade marking the congress’s close was held Wednesday evening, at which Ju Ae stood alongside her father on the reviewing platform. Despite sustained speculation that Kim might use the congress to formally install Ju Ae in a party position and thereby institutionalise his succession plans, no such appointment was announced. Party rules require members to be at least 18, and Ju Ae is believed to be approximately 13 years old. She was not seen at any internal party meetings during the congress itself.
The recipients of the rifles included all members of the party’s Central Military Commission, senior commanders of the Korean People’s Army, and officers of the guard units that protect the regime’s leadership. Among them was Kim’s younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, whose formal party title was publicly confirmed for the first time in the KCNA reporting. KCNA identified Kim Yo Jong as director of the General Affairs Department of the party’s Central Committee, the first time her specific institutional role has been officially named by state media, and a disclosure analysts said would clarify her standing within the leadership hierarchy beyond the informal power she has long been known to exercise. State media photographs showed her handling a rifle alongside Hyon Song Wol, a senior aide to Kim Jong Un understood to be a close associate of his wife, Ri Sol Ju.
The succession question dominated external analysis of the congress even as its domestic messaging focused on affirming Kim’s leadership record over the past five years. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service assessed earlier this month that Kim Jong Un was close to formally designating Ju Ae as his heir, a judgement that went beyond the agency’s earlier position that she was beginning to provide policy input and had acquired de facto status as the second-highest figure in the country.
Since her first public appearance at a long-range missile test in November 2022, Ju Ae has accompanied her father to a steadily expanding range of events, including weapons demonstrations, factory inspections, and a trip to Beijing in September 2025 during which Kim Jong Un held his first summit with Chinese President Xi Jinping in six years.
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Analysts monitoring the congress noted that Kim’s public statements, which leaned heavily on themes of the country’s survival against external hostility and the importance of passing on the “socialist cause,” were themselves potentially significant in the succession context. Some experts said that if Kim Jong Un sought to use the congress to subtly cement his daughter’s position without triggering legal or procedural complications, the method would involve precisely this kind of self-congratulatory language about endurance and inheritance rather than a formal institutional announcement.
The congress proceedings and their aftermath unfolded against a backdrop of sharply elevated regional tensions. North Korea has in recent months deepened its military relationship with Russia, deploying an estimated 10,000 to 14,000 troops to support Russian forces in Ukraine, a deployment that South Korea and the United States have condemned as a direct intervention in the European conflict. Pyongyang has also continued ballistic missile testing and resumed cross-border electronic disruption operations targeting South Korea.
No response from the South Korean or United States governments to the KCNA reporting was issued as of Saturday. The formal record of decisions adopted at the Ninth Congress had not been published in full by North Korean state media as of the time of publication.
