In July, when North Korea‘s state media identified Ri Jol Su as the wife of the country’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un, reporting the couple’s visit to an amusement park, the contrast with his father, Kim Jong Il, could not have been starker. State media reports and official accounts of the elder Kim’s activities and behavior never mentioned any of his four (or five) wives or seven children.

In fact, North Korea’s new leader seems to be putting some distance between himself and his father. By allowing the country’s state media to report on his marital status and identify Ri by name, Kim Jong Un has aligned himself more closely to his paternal grandfather, North Korean founding father and president Kim Il Sung, whose first wife Kim Jong Suk is a venerated figure in North Korea’s political culture. State propaganda rarely, if ever, explicitly identifies Kim Jong Un as Kim Jong Il’s son; documentary films, essays, and editorials refer instead only to “bloodline” and “revolutionary family.”

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