A former high-level CIA official and other North Korea analysts downplayed reports Monday that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is in a coma, asserting the reclusive young dictator is likely keeping a low profile amid the North’s recent COVID-19 outbreak and a delicate and difficult time in denuclearization talks.
The Pyongyang regime has faced persistent questions about its leader’s health, fueled by lengthy disappearances and signs of policy and economic disarray. But Mr. Kim has repeatedly resurfaced, apparently still in charge.
“Long-time Korea watchers are the most skeptical of rumors of a North Korean leader’s incapacitation or death, having endured countless false reports,” said former CIA Korea Deputy Division Chief Bruce Klingner, noting the latest reports claiming Mr. Kim was seriously ill and his increasingly high-profile sister, Kim Yo Jong, was taking over the regime.”
Earlier this year, there was breathless speculation of Kim Jong Un being in a coma or dead, only to see him re-emerge healthy, at least by the rotund leader’s standards,” Mr. Klingner told The Washington Times. The new rumors, he said, were “even more tenuous than previous iterations.”
But speculation refuses to subside following reports by several U.S. outlets citing sensational claims made by Chang Song-min, an aide to South Korea’s late President Kim Dae-jung, to South Korean media outlets about Kim Jong Un’s status.
Mr. Chang could not be reached for comment Monday, but South Korea’s Yonhap News Agency reported that South Korean intelligence had recently determined that the 36-year-old Mr. Kim had ceded part of his authority to his close aides, including to his younger sister.
Alexandre Mansourov, a longtime North Korea expert who teaches at Georgetown University’s Center for Security Studies, called the latest rumors of an ailing Mr. Kim “total GARBAGE” in an email Monday.
“The perpetrators of the ’Kim Jong Un is dead (in a coma, etc.)’ disinformation campaign know no shame and have no brakes,” he said.
North Korea state-controlled media have circulated images of Mr. Kim presiding over major government meetings in Pyongyang during the past two weeks and, over the past couple of months, there are images showing him presiding over roughly a dozen official party events. Video broadcast in early August on North Korean state television also showed a mobile Mr. Kim touring a rural area affected by heavy rains.
Mr. Mansourov said he believes the rumors about Mr. Kim are being pushed by a range of sources in South Korea — including anti-regime North Korean defectors living in the South — with the goal of sabotaging peace negotiations between the U.S. and North Korea.
Many defectors advocate regime change rather than diplomacy and may seek to capitalize on the current moment of stalled nuclear talks with Pyongyang. The Trump administration’s pursuit of a major denuclearization commitment from the Kim regime has struggled since the breakdown of the February 2019 Hanoi summit between Mr. Trump and Mr. Kim.
Mr. Trump said he walked away from that meeting early because Mr. Kim demanded sweeping sanctions relief in exchange for only a limited commitment to destroy part of his nuclear arsenal.
After the talks broke down, North Korea carried out waves of short-range missile tests and threatened to shock the world with an unpleasant “Christmas gift.”
While the Christmas season came and went without a long-range missile test or fresh nuclear tests by Pyongyang, some national security analysts say the Christmas gift may soon become an “October surprise” engineered by North Koreans to upend the U.S. presidential campaign season.
David Maxwell, a former U.S. Special Forces officer and North Korea expert with the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, said Monday he too was “skeptical that anything has happened to Kim.”
“Although the regime is working hard to control all information into and out of the north, I believe if Kim was dead or in a coma we would have heard about it,” Mr. Maxwell said. “Especially if it occurred as far back as April when the rumors started surfacing.”
He noted even the impoverished North Korean population still has an estimated 6.5 million smartphones, with service links across the border into China.
“I just do not think the regime could keep a lid on such explosive information,” he said. “And we have seen no signs of anything happening inside Pyongyang to indicate succession.”
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
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