The health status of the North Korean public is just about as unknown as that of Kim Jong-un. natsecHeather writes
Have you seen this man? Photo: Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images In North Korea, rumors about the demise of the country’s leaders are a national tradition. The Quincy Institute’s Jessica Lee recalls that, in 2008, a “self-proclaimed North Korea expert said that Kim Jong Il [had] died from diabetes in 2003,” five years earlier, “and that a double was running the country.
Various sources have reported very different realities. An adviser to South Korea’s president assured Fox News that “Kim Jong-un is alive and well”; Japanese media claimed to have been told by a member of a Chinese medical mission that Kim is in a “vegetative state” after “clutching his chest and falling to the ground”; U.S.
Although coverage of the rumors has been filled with speculation about instability and violence, experts point out that past transitions have tended to be quiet, at least to the outside world. After Kim Il Sung died in 1994, the regime continued negotiating with the United States over what became the Agreed Framework — although that deal broke down under the new government fairly quickly.
COVID-19 is the wild card — both because it’s possible Kim has been ill with it, and because the regime’s neighbors are terrified of an epidemic overwhelming the North’s meager medical facilities. As deaths mounted in China and South Korea last month, Pyongyang claimed, improbably, to have no cases. But the government confined foreigners to their houses, and many later opted to leave the country. Analysts and reporters have speculated about outbreaks in the military or detention centers.
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