Kim Yo Jong Facts: Kim Jong Un Promotes Sister Within Ruling Party

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un's 28-year-old sister, Kim Yo Jong, was promoted to the hermit kingdom's top decision-making body by her brother, reports said Sunday citing the state media.

This move by Kim signals he is strengthening his position in the country's political circles by pushing his most important people to the center of power, a Reuters report that cited experts and officials, suggested.

Yo Jong and Kim were born to the same mother — Ko Yong Hui, a Japanese-born former dancer. Yo Jong was made the deputy director of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers' Party in 2014. Since then, her political profile has been rising, CNN reported.

Like other members of the Kim clan, not much is known about Yo Jong. According to North Korea Leadership Watch — a website focusing on North Korea’s the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) leadership — when the succession planning of the Kim family was underway, a significant role for Yo Jong was reserved.

Here are some riveting facts about Kim's younger sister:

1. Yo Jong was born Sept. 26, 1987, and is the youngest child from Kim Jong Il’s relationship with Yong Hui, who was the consort of the former North Korean supreme leader.

2. Yo Jong was raised primarily in Ko's residence on Ch'angkwang Hillin in central Pyongyang, along with her older brothers — Kim Jong Chol and Kim. The family was largely hidden away behind the walls of residential compounds.

3. Between 1996 and 2000, she attended an elementary school, which was close to where Kim studied, under the name “Kim Yo’ ng-sun."

4. Yo Jong’s whereabouts and activities until 2007 were not known. However, at that time, she had attained an educational level so as to be appointed as a junior cadre in the central party, working under her family members.

5. During 2009 and 2010, Yo Jong started helping Kim to establish hereditary succession campaign.

6. Since Kim's succession to the supreme leadership of the DPRK, she has been often observed attending brother's public appearances. She is usually seen in an olive green jacket, which is commonly worn by the reporters and photographers that document Kim's on-site visits and military field inspections.

Yo Jong's promotion to an alternate member of the politburo — the country’s top decision-making body — is seen in a positive light by experts, The Guardian reported.

Experts say Yo Jong is her brother's replacement for his aunt, Kim Kyong Hui, who was a member of his father’s inner circle but does not have an active role in the new regime, according to The Guardian. “Through the personnel reshuffle, the Kim Jong Un regime has ended its co-existence with the remnants of the previous Kim Jong Il regime by carrying out a generational replacement in the party’s key elite posts,” Kim Yong Hyun, a professor of North Korean studies at Dongguk University in Seoul, told Yonhap news agency.