North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un has promoted his younger sister to the secretive country’s powerful politburo, consolidating her position as one of the country’s most influential women. Kim Yo-jong has been made an alternate member of the top decision-making body, North Korean state media reported on Sunday. The move indicates that she has replaced their aunt, Kim Kyong-hee, who was a key decision-maker when their father, the former leader Kim Jong-il, was alive. “It shows that her portfolio and writ is far more substantive than previously believed and it is a further consolidation of the Kim family’s power,” said Michael Madden, a North Korea expert at Johns Hopkins University’s 38 North website. The personnel changes were announced after a meeting of the country’s central committee of the ruling Workers’ party, during which Kim said his nuclear weapons were a “powerful deterrent” that guaranteed his regime’s sovereignty and helped to counter the “protracted nuclear threats of the US imperialists”. Kim Jong Sik and Ri Pyong Chol, two of the three men behind Kim’s banned missile programme, were also promoted amid a wider reshuffle and an increasingly tense stand off between Pyongyang and Washington over North Korea’s nuclear ambitions. Speaking to reporters…