Andrei Lankov

Lil’ Kim: should the West prepare for chaos in North Korea?

On 24 June, North Korean state TV aired a short interview with an unnamed Pyongyang resident. The man, who appeared to be in his fifties, said that his fellow countrymen had all been left heartbroken and in tears when they saw the new, ‘emaciated’ look of Kim Jong-un. The country’s hereditary dictator, who hadn’t been seen in public for a month, recently re-emerged looking rather different. Even now it’s a bit of a stretch to call him ‘emaciated’, since his estimated body weight is nearly 19 stone. Still, it is a big drop from the 23 stone he weighed only a month earlier.

However, it was not Kim’s weight loss but the interview itself which was truly surprising. Ever since Kim came to power in 2011, his health has been a topic of speculation for the western media — he is obese (with a reported passion for Swiss cheese), smokes like a chimney and is thought to drink excessively. But in North Korea, even a private chat about the leader’s appearance would land you in a prison camp.

Why has this decades-old taboo been broken? The most logical explanation is that something really is wrong with Kim’s health, and that the situation is grave enough that the state-run media is beginning to drop hints about the problems. Instructions to do so will have come from the very top.

Reports of something amiss first began to arise in April last year. Kim disappeared from public view, failing to appear at the annual commemoration of his grand-father Kim Il-sung’s birthday on 15 April, or even to send the customary flower basket. This is a major official holiday in the country; Kim’s absence was the equivalent of the Queen ignoring Remembrance Sunday.

‘Bloody cancel culture.’

During the subsequent three months, Kim was rarely to be seen.

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