Health of North Korea’s missing leader Kim Jong-un a worry for years

The scuttlebutt about a shaky-handed North Korean surgeon may be rife, but the truth is the missing leader’s health and lifestyle have been a worry for years.

Where’s Kim? This undated picture released by Korean Central News Agency on in 2019 shows North Korean leader Kim Jong Un riding a white horse amongst the first snow at Mouth Paektu.

China has dispatched a team of senior doctors to treat Kim Jong-un, it was reported yesterday, amid conflicting accounts about the health of the North Korean dictator since he vanished from public view two weeks ago.

The delegation was led by a senior official from the Communist Party international liaison department, which handles relations with its neighbour, according to Reuters, citing three sources “familiar with the situation”.

Other unconfirmed reports, attributed to senior party sources in Beijing, said Kim had died after the Chinese medical team arrived too late to save him following failed heart surgery. In one version, an operation to insert a stent went wrong because a North Korean doctor’s hands were shaking so badly.

As with all coverage of the leadership of the secrecy obsessed, nuclear armed state, the swirl of reports and rumours can be treated only with great caution.

In contrast to the reports of Kim’s death, a South Korean media outlet reported US spy planes had tracked his entourage down to his beachside palace in Wonsan on the east coast. His favourite retreat is the sort of place he would choose to recuperate from any surgery.

A South Korean intelligence official told Reuters that Kim was alive and expected to make a public appearance soon, but the comments did not clarify whether he had been ill.

Questions about Kim’s whereabouts intensified after he missed two important events this month. Daily NK, a South Korean news outlet that works closely with defectors and sources in the north, reported last week that Kim was seriously ill after heart surgery.

Kim’s health — he is overweight and is said to smoke and drink heavily — has been a key focus of attention since he assumed power in late 2011.

Seoul and Beijing have played down the reports, while mixed signals have emerged from the White House.

But any doubts over the leadership of the country and control of its nuclear arsenal — and speculation about possible power struggles — inevitably causes deep alarm in capitals around the world.

Kim’s health — he is overweight and is said to smoke and drink heavily — has been a key focus of attention since he assumed power in late 2011. His predecessors in the dynasty, his father, Kim Jong-il, and his grandfather, Kim Il-sung, both died from heart problems.

There is no known successor if Kim dies. He is reported to have young children, but that detail, like his age — he is believed to be 36 or 37 — has never been officially confirmed.

He ordered the execution of his uncle Jang Song-thaek, once viewed as a mentor, after he came to power and then the assassination of his half-brother, Kim Jong-nam, with nerve agent at Kuala Lumpur airport. His other brother, Kim Jong-chol, is viewed as a political lightweight more interested in the music of Eric Clapton than power.

His sister and chief propagandist, Kim Yo-jong, has emerged as his closest lieutenant. She is descended from the all-important family bloodline and is reportedly - again, unconfirmed - married to the son of a senior party veteran. But, as a young woman, there are doubts she would be acceptable as a leader to the ageing males who dominate the party and the army.

“For absolutist dictatorships, succession is an Achilles heel,” wrote Aidan Foster-Carter, an expert on North Korea at Leeds University, on the NK News website. “North Korea’s three ‘estates’ - party, army and government, especially the first two - may slug it out. So might hawks and doves within each of these.”

Kim inspects a drill of mortar sub-units of corps of the Korean People's Army at an undisclosed location.

State media last stated Kim’s location when he led a politburo meeting on April 11. Since then, a large-scale missile test was staged, but went unreported in the north, and he apparently failed to attend the country’s most important celebration, the Day of the Sun, marking the birthday of Kim Il-sung on April 15.

Nor was there mention in any North Korean outlet of his favourite project, the huge Wonsan-Kalma tourist zone, that was scheduled for completion on the Day of the Sun.

Kim has vanished from view once before - for a month in 2014 - and on that occasion he returned walking with a cane after apparently undergoing ankle surgery or treatment for gout.

During his current absence, South Korean officials said they had detected no signs of unusual activity in North Korea while the Pentagon noted no changes in “military readiness” or “defensive posturing”. But Kim’s father had been dead two days before the outside world had any inkling.

And not all was normal in Pyongyang as panic buying hit stores stocking imported goods during last week. The shops are popular with the elites, who might have received word of reports circulating abroad about Kim’s health.

The Sunday Times