North Korea Shows Kim With Cane in First Sighting in Weeks
People in both South and north Korea likely are relieved to see there has not been some kind of coup in the north. There is less chance of violence in the north or in the south this way.
North
Korean leader Kim Jong Un made his first public appearance in six
weeks, walking with a cane during a visit to a new residential block as
he ended a period of seclusion that prompted speculation about his grip
on power.
This undated picture released by North Korea's official Korean Central News Agency on... Read More
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made his first public appearance in
six weeks, walking with a cane during a visit to a new residential block
as he ended a period of seclusion that prompted speculation about his
grip on power.
Kim commended workers who built the Wisong
Scientists Residential District and was accompanied by senior officials
including Vice Marshal Hwang Pyong So and Workers’ Party secretary Choe
Ryong Hae, the official Korean Central News Agency reported today. Photographs
on the website of the Rodong Sinmun, a newspaper published by the
ruling party, showed Kim talking and laughing while holding a cane.
Neither report gave the date of his visit.
“The fact that he’s
back while still recovering shows how much he wants to quash rumors and
speculation about who’s in power,” Kim Yong Hyun, a professor of North Korea studies at Seoul’s Dongguk University,
said by phone. “North Korea will now try to portray him as a leader who
cares so much about people that he’s back even with the support of a
cane.”
Kim is the subject of intense scrutiny by the outside
world as he exercises dynastic control over the North’s 1.2-million
troops and nuclear arms program. Believed to be around 30, he inherited
rule when his father Kim Jong Il died of a heart attack in December
2011, and has no known child old enough to succeed him should he become
incapacitated.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, right, claps during the unveiling ceremony of two... Read More
Prolonged Absence
His absence from public view,
the longest since he became the country’s “supreme commander,” fanned
debate about his being sidelined by gout or diabetes or overthrown in a
coup. South Korea’s
Chosun Ilbo newspaper reported Sept. 30 that he was hospitalized after
surgery on both ankles to address an injury sustained during field
supervisions in June.
Kim, who regularly appears in state media
overseeing everything from missile launches to grain harvests, was last
seen on Sept. 3 when he attended a concert with his wife, Ri Sol Ju.
North Korea’s state television said Sept. 25 that he was experiencing
“discomfort” in his body.
Footage showed him walking with a limp
in July, and media speculation about his health intensified when he
missed a session of parliament on Sept. 25. He also skipped an annual
visit to a family mausoleum on Oct. 10 to pay tribute to his father and
his grandfather Kim Il Sung, the country’s founder.
During
his absence, North Korea sent a high-level delegation led by Hwang to
the South for talks that ended in a pledge to improve ties. In the week
after the Oct. 4 visit, North and South Korea exchanged fire near their
disputed sea border and fired machine gun shots across the land border.
No casualties were reported from either incident.
‘No Problem’
South
Korea’s Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl Jae said on KBS Television on
Oct. 5 that Kim Yang Gon, the North’s top policy maker on the South,
told him during the high-level visit there was “no problem at all” with
the leader’s health. Kim Jong Il
disappeared for more than two months in 2008 after suffering what South
Korea and the U.S. believed to be a stroke, before he re-appeared
looking thinner and older.
The young Kim consolidated his grip
on power by purging senior officials, including the removal in July 2012
of Chief of the General Staff Ri Yong Ho. In December, he removed his
uncle and de facto deputy, Jang Song Thaek, on charges of factionalism
and graft, and then had him executed.
To contact the reporter on this story: Sam Kim in Seoul at skim609@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Rosalind Mathieson at rmathieson3@bloomberg.net Stuart Biggs, Andy Sharp
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