Rumours abound over absence of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un

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Rumours abound over absence of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un

Rare visit by purported No 2 Hwang Pyong-so to South in the presence of bodyguards fuels speculation of Kim Jong-un's ill health or a coup

PUBLISHED : Wednesday, 08 October, 2014, 3:11am
UPDATED : Wednesday, 08 October, 2014, 3:11am

McClatchy-Tribune

Hwang Pyong-so (centre), flanked by bodyguards, arrives at Incheon International Airport in South Korea for a rare visit. Photo: EPA

If North Korean leader Kim Jong-un isn't sick, he must be dead - at least politically.

That's the thinking behind a rash of rumours that the portly 31-year-old scion of the country's founding communists has been toppled from power.

Kim has not been seen in public for more than a month, and his absence from the September 25 gathering of the rubber-stamp parliament fuelled Korea watchers' speculation that he has been deposed by a palace coup.

Then a high-level delegation of Pyongyang officials made a surprise visit to the South Korean city of Incheon on Saturday, ostensibly to catch the closing ceremonies of the Asian Games. The top-ranking visitor, purported No2 Hwang Pyong-so, conveyed Kim's "heartfelt greeting" to the South Korean officials with whom he met. That only served to ramp up media and academic speculation over why Pyongyang was making such a conciliatory gesture at this time.

South Korean Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae took advantage of the rare opportunity for firsthand information from the North in asking after the health of Kim after a North Korean television report last week that alluded to the leader being in "discomfort".

"There is nothing wrong with the health of Secretary Kim," Ryoo's counterpart from Pyongyang, Workers' Party secretary for Korean affairs Kim Yang-gon, told his host.

So what is the reason?

South Korean media have reported that Kim suffers from gout, which might explain why he appeared to be limping the last time he was spotted in public on September 3.

New Focus International, a two-year-old self-funded news site that claims to offer authentic North Korean content and analysis, has woven developments since last year's execution of Kim's uncle and then second in command, Jang Song-taek, into a narrative that has the young leader sidelined in a figurehead role. Hwang, who has accumulated new military and political powers in recent months, has usurped Kim's authority and is calling the shots from within a once-obscure department of the ruling Workers' Party, the theory goes.

"The big rumour now is that the Organisation and Guidance Department has taken over," said Jeffrey Lewis, a defence and security scholar at the Monterey Institute of International Studies.

The department that was built up during the 1994-2011 reign of Kim's father, Kim Jong-il, as a kind of internal security apparatus, had taken on a life of its own, the New Focus website reported, claiming that Kim had become a mere "figurehead" as leader.

Lewis calls the speculation on an internal coup "an awfully strong extrapolation of very small things", including reports of a travel ban on Pyongyang residents and the presence of bodyguards with Hwang during his Incheon visit. (Only the supreme leader was entitled to protection, New Focus International reported, casting Hwang's behaviour with the South Koreans as a "fundamental violation of North Korea's power principle".)

"I think they are plausible rumours, at least worth paying attention to, and it's interesting that he's been out of view that long," Lewis said of the speculation on Kim's physical and political condition. "There are some things out of place. Something weird is going on. But they do weird things all the time that shock us."

As with most reports circumnavigating their way out of North Korea, "sometimes the right answer in life is 'I don't know,'" Lewis said of Kim's situation.