As Kim Jong Un Disappears, North Korea Watchers Advise Caution
The guessing game began when the leader missed his country’s most important holiday April 15, then ratcheted higher after a South Korean publication reported he had heart surgery
By Andrew Jeong
April 26, 2020
One question swirled among North Korea watchers this weekend: Where is Kim Jong Un?, as the young dictator’s unexplained absence stretched past two weeks and Twitter lighted up with speculation about his incapacitation or death.
As of late Sunday, there were no known facts about the third-generation leader’s health. The guessing game began when Mr. Kim missed the country’s most important holiday April 15, then ratcheted higher after a South Korean publication reported he had heart surgery. On Saturday, a Japanese magazine took it a step further, writing that he had been left in a vegetative state after the procedure was botched.
The rumors illustrate North Korea’s outsize dependence on a single person for its political stability. The answer to the question of his health holds significant implications for the future of high-stakes nuclear negotiations with the U.S. and the stability of a country on China’s border.
“These persistent rumors suggest that there are concerns that his health could impact his ability to lead the country,” said Jean Lee, a public-policy fellow at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Center. “And those concerns are always worth paying attention to with a country like North Korea where the system has been built around the rule of one family.”
But the flow of information from the secretive state is so poor, especially when it comes to the health of its leaders, that all longtime experts could do was hypothesize, advise caution and wait...............
The guessing game began when Mr. Kim missed the country’s most important holiday April 15, then ratcheted higher after a South Korean publication reported he had heart surgery.
www.wsj.com
