Beijing: Since taking power in 2011, North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un has died at least three or four times.
On one occasion, it was during failed heart surgery. Another time, he was assassinated. And, as recently as this week, he expired in a Beijing hospital after suffering a brain haemorrhage.
The reports of his demise, as Mark Twain would put it, were greatly exaggerated.
In an apparent bid to dispel the latest rumours, North Korean state media on Tuesday released photos of Kim visiting a clothing and shoe expo in Pyongyang a day earlier, looking distinctly alive.
In one photo, the 42-year-old supreme leader is inspecting a pale pink sneaker held by his daughter Kim Ju-ae, 13.
As a totalitarian state, North Korea’s state-run media is a propaganda machine whose fundamental role is to reinforce the Kim regime’s grip on power. The information it publishes is difficult to independently verify due to the country’s extreme secrecy and largely impervious border with the outside world.
This secrecy ensures Kim’s health remains a constant source of speculation, fuelled by his corpulent appearance, his known smoking habit and family history of heart disease (his father and grandfather both died from heart attacks).
His media appearances and fluctuating weight are closely monitored by analysts in the US and South Korea for clues about his health and regime stability. In 2014, for example, he reappeared in the media after a prolonged absence using a cane to assist his walking.
The fact that Kim reportedly travels with a mobile toilet on rare overseas summits to prevent his bodily waste from being examined by foreign actors only adds to the intrigue.
So too does the unclear succession plan. North Korea has never had a female leader. Some analysts believe Kim is grooming Ju-ae to taken on a leadership role, while his sister Kim Yo-jong already holds a powerful role as his spokesperson and could be a frontrunner.
However, the questionable credibility of North Korean media is perhaps matched only by the rumour generators — often people in dissident or defector networks.
They periodically crank out wild speculation about Kim’s demise, usually coinciding with a period of prolonged absence of Kim from state media headlines.
The rumours are sometimes framed as facts, for which no evidence is tendered, and sent out into the social media ecosystem to spread in a bonfire of disinformation.
The genesis of the latest rumour is US-based Chinese dissident Wanjun Xie, who identifies as the chairman of the Chinese Democratic Party, a group banned in China.
In series of posts on X, he published claims that Kim had suffered a brain haemorrhage and had been rushed to a hospital in Beijing because North Korea’s medical facilities were too inadequate to treat him.
“Kim Jong-un succumbed to his injuries and died. His body has been secretly transported back to North Korea, and the news of his death is being kept under wraps,” he posted on October 19.
Yonah news agency, South Korea’s key newswire service, reported on Tuesday that South Korean diplomatic and security officials had heard “nothing” to support the claims.
Xie further claimed that the Chinese Communist Party had dispatched 9000 troops to Pyongyang to assist Kim’s daughter in stabilising the region. On Tuesday, he speculated that the dictator’s sister had, in fact, assumed control and fired warning shots at South Korea — a move he claimed “indirectly confirms the rumours that Kim Jong-un is dead”.
As Xie’s posts clocked up millions of views, some Western media tabloids including the UK’s The Sun fanned the flames, reporting on the swirling death speculation.
A cursory glance at Xie’s X account reveals he is a prolific churner of the conspiracy mill.
In the past few days alone, he has posted feverish theories that Chinese Leader Xi Jinping had been targeted in assassination attempt by rebel military factions, that Xi’s chief-of-staff Cai Qi was leading a coup against him and was now under house arrest, and that Xi has “not only lost his mind but has gone mad”. Meanwhile, Kim’s reappearance at the clothing expo was the work of a body double, he suggested.
Xie was contacted for comment
One of the last occasions that Kim death rumours picked up enough traction to generate international headlines was in 2020. He disappeared from public view for several weeks and missed the country’s biggest holiday on April 15, marking the birthday of the country’s founder and his grandfather, Kim Il-sung.
At the time, Ji Seong-ho, a North Korean defector who became a South Korean politician, said in an interview with local media that he was “99 per cent” that Kim had died during heart surgery. He was forced to issue an apology several days later after Kim materialised in a state media video at fertiliser factory ribbon-cutting ceremony.
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