North Korean leader remains missing amid illness claims

SEOUL

By Alex Jensen

Amid intense media speculation in South Korea, the North's state news agency remained silent Friday concerning the mysterious more than three-week public absence of leader Kim Jong-un.

Kim, in his early 30s but a heavy smoker and visibly overweight, failed to appear at a session of his country’s parliament for the first time Thursday.

The North’s official Korea Central News Agency did report on the Supreme People’s Assembly meeting – but failed to offer an explanation for Kim’s absence.

Reporters in South Korea, separated from the North by a heavily guarded border, have been questioning why Kim has not been seen in public since attending a September 3 concert in capital Pyongyang.

Seoul’s unification ministry – which handles inter-Korean affairs – has so far been unable to provide an answer.

Ministry spokesperson Park Soo-jin told a media briefing Friday that the South Korean government is “monitoring with interest while keeping in mind various possibilities, including the speculation about health problems.”

Ever since Kim was seen to be limping at an event in July, onlookers have suggested he may have been suffering from gout – a condition linked to a lifestyle of indulgence.

Despite North Korea’s notorious food shortages, Kim Jong-un has noticeably gained weight since he succeeded his father Kim Jong-il, who died at the end of 2011.

Kim senior is widely thought to have suffered from gout, and also disappeared from public view in 2008 amid claims that he had had a stroke.

While Kim Jong-il has prepared a successor just as his father Kim Il-sung before him, the political implications of Kim Jong-un being incapacitated due to ill health are unclear without having an heir even close to adulthood.

Meanwhile, the speculation continues – with some reports saying that the North Korean leader’s apparent fondness for eating large quantities of cheese, having spent time in Switzerland during his youth, may be to blame.

Given the North’s import limitations due to sanctions and lack of local expertise, Pyongyang is reported to have been trying to train its own cheese connoisseurs – though a request for help was turned down by French dairy school Ecole Nationale d’Industrie Latiere, according to the institution’s head who spoke to British newspaper The Independent earlier this year.

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