With sniper rifle photos, Kim Jong Un intensifies spotlight on his daughter, a potential successor

North Korea's official KCNA agency released pics showing North Korean leader Kim Jong Un (L) firing a new sniper rifle with his daughter Kim Ju Ae , at an undisclosed place in North Korea. (KCNA VIA KNS/AFP/Getty Image via CNN Newsource)

North Korea on Saturday released pictures showing leader Kim Jong Un and his teenage daughter at a rifle range, the latest propaganda images to promote the child touted as a potential successor.

State media KCNA said Kim and his daughter – along with Kim Jong Un’s powerful sister Kim Yo Jong and other officials – fired the rifles after the North Korean leader gifted them to military leaders to salute their service to the reclusive state’s ruling party.

One of the images – which was flagged during a CNN check as being potentially AI-manipulated – showed the girl, believed to be named Kim Ju Ae and in her early teens, firing a sniper rifle.

In all, North Korea released 27 pictures of the event.

CNN checked four of the photos for signs of manipulation. Only the picture of Kim Ju Ae firing the rifle showed possible use of AI.

Kim specially prepared the gifts of the “new generation sniper’s rifle” for the key leaders, calling it “a really wonderful weapon,” the KCNA report said.

The shooting-range event came after the conclusion of a congress of the Korean Workers’ Party, a largely rubber-stamp political gathering of the nation’s elite, where Kim’s leadership was reaffirmed by unanimous vote.

At the assembly, Kim Yo Jong was promoted to director of a party department after years in a deputy role, solidifying her standing in the inner circle. Several senior party and military posts were reshuffled, elevating younger loyalists.

But much of the attention was on Kim’s daughter.

Kim Ju Ae stood with her father on the grandstand as he reviewed some 14,000 troops goosestepping through Kim Il Sung Square, named after her great-grandfather, in the capital of Pyongyang.

She has also been at her father’s side for previous missile tests and other ruling-party events, fuelling speculation that she will be the fourth-generation successor to the Kim family dynasty that has ruled North Korea since before the Korean War started in 1950.

In February, South Korea’s spy agency said it believes the dictator has “entered the stage of nominating her as successor.”

There has been no official confirmation from North Korea on the daughter’s role, but the image of her purportedly firing the sniper rifle on Friday brought even more attention to her.

“By emphasizing that Kim Ju Ae knows how to fire a rifle, North Korea is hinting that she is undergoing succession training,” Yang Mu-jin, a distinguished professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told the Chosun Daily newspaper.

Other images appeared to show Kim Ju Ae, wearing a leather jacket, observing through binoculars as her father took a shot, and helping present the rifles to others at the event.