Kim Jong-un dead rumours – North Korea’s World War III-mongering ‘just a bid to cover-up tyrant’s perilous health’
NORTH Korea’s belligerence towards the South could be an attempt to distract from Kim Jong-un’s poor health and other problems in the country, Japan’s foreign minister has said. Recent weeks have seen tensions escalating on the Korean peninsula as well as the relative absence of Kim from public view. The dictator disappeared for three weeks […]
NORTH Korea’s belligerence towards the South could be an attempt to distract from Kim Jong-un’s poor health and other problems in the country, Japan’s foreign minister has said.
Recent weeks have seen tensions escalating on the Korean peninsula as well as the relative absence of Kim from public view.
The dictator disappeared for three weeks in April before briefly resurfacing, and currently has not been since a meeting with senior officials on June 7.
Speculation has swirled about the possible reasons for his withdrawal, with reports earlier suggesting he had undergone a botched heart operation after collapsing while on a walk.
Speaking at a press briefing at Tokyo’s Japanese Foreign Correspondents Club, foreign minister Taro Kono said the latest escalations may be intended to “take the attention of North Korean people away from Kim Jong Un’s health”.
“We have some suspicion about his health,” he said.
He went on to say it was thought Kim is taking extra precautions to guard himself during the coronavirus pandemic.
North Korea has so far claimed not to have seen a single case of the virus, but analysts have raised doubts about whether the country could have remained unaffected.
“We suspect that COVID-19 is spreading around North Korea… and Kim Jong Un is trying to… not [be] infected,” Kono said.
“So sometimes he doesn’t come [out] in public.”
SITUATION INSIDE NORTH KOREA ‘BAD’
The recent belligerence from the North has included the blowing up of a jointly run Inter-Korean Liaison Office, which previously served as neutral ground for negotiations in the absence of formal embassies.
Among the lines of communication maintained by the office were hotlines between senior figures within the countries’ militaries as well as their presidential offices.
The North has also repeatedly threatened to move its military in the demilitarised zone, a 2.5-mile strip of territory separating the two countries.
North Korea was also threatening “military action” until Wednesday of this week, when state media claimed the action had been called off following an assessment of the “prevailing situation”.
Satellite images had earlier shown an unusually high number of what were thought to be fighter jets parked on a runway at Wonsan-Kalma International Airport on the country’s east coast.
Kono said other explanations for the recent belligerence included the “bad harvest or the bad economy”.
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“The harvest last year in North Korea wasn’t quite good – bad, actually,” he said.
The North Korean economy is known to have been badly impacted by heavy international sanctions intended to stop the country pursuing a nuclear weapons programme.
