© KCNA
Kim Kyong-hui (circled) reappeared in state media reporting on Sunday, her first such appearance in over six years.
Kim Kyong-hui (circled) reappeared in state media reporting on Sunday, her first such appearance in over six years.
Kim Kyong-hui, 73, was with Kim Jong-un and other party officials when they watched a Lunar New Year's music performance, the North's official KCNA news agency reported Sunday.
The North's top newspaper Rodon Sinmun published a picture which showed the aunt, bespectacled and wearing black Korean traditional clothes, sitting next to Kim Jong-un's wife Ri Sol-ju and the leader's sister Kim Yo-jong.
It listed Kim Kyong-hui's name next to the North's No 2, Choe Ryong-hae.
"This means that her familial status within the Kim dynasty remains largely intact, despite her political difficulties following her husband's execution," Professor Koh Yu-hwan of Dongguk University told South China Morning Post.
Kim Kyong-hui's husband Jang Song-thaek, once considered the second most powerful man in the highly hierarchical state, was executed in 2013 after a special military tribunal found him guilty of treason, the North's news media has reported.
His execution came after he was stripped of all posts and expelled from the ruling Workers' Party for "criminal acts" including mismanagement of the state financial system, womanising and alcohol abuse.
Jang brought together "undesirable forces and formed a faction as the boss of a modern day factional group for a long time and thus committed such hideous crime as attempting to overthrow the state," the North's official KCNA news agency said at the time.
Comment: Doubling down, playing out their farce, it seems the Democrats' many tales - full of sound and fury - continue to signify 'nothing'.