North Korea threatened to break off peace talks with the South yesterday amid speculation that its portly young dictator, Kim Jong-un, who has vanished in recent weeks, may be ill or has been overthrown.
The threat came after an exchange of machinegun fire that broke out when South Korean activists used balloons to send 200,000 anti-regime leaflets, books and video discs into the isolated Stalinist state.The North Koreans hit back by saying the incident could wreck a surprise move towards détente that has coincided with Kim’s disappearance.
Hopes had been raised of a possible thaw in relations when a Russian-made Ilyushin-62 jet, normally used by Kim himself, brought a high-level North Korean delegation to Incheon airport in South Korea last week.The group included a top adviser to Kim, General Hwang Pyong So, who sits on the national defence commission and runs the army’s general political bureau. Kim’s own bodyguards, in suits and sunglasses, accompanied them.
No such delegation had appeared in the south for about five years. The North Koreans offered to resume talks, breaking the ice that has frozen political dialogue and led to repeated military clashes.
One of the North Koreans declared: “There is no problem at all with the leader’s health.”
South Korean Unification Minister Lim Byeong-cheol said afterwards: “Kim Jong-un still appears to be in charge of the country.”It all appeared to have the dictator’s blessing.
Last weekend’s exchange of fire, however, might doom the initiative into becoming one of the many lost opportunities to reach a settlement on the divided Korean peninsula.It was complicated by the mystery surrounding Kim. His absence has led to speculation that one of his four siblings will play a greater role if Kim is seriously ill: his ailments are said to include hereditary gout and diabetes, high blood pressure and high cholesterol.
Kim, who is about 31, has not been seen in public since September 3, when he attended a concert. Like his father, Kim Jong-il, he is wont to conduct “on the spot inspections” at farms, factories and barracks across the land. It was on one such visit in July that he was rumoured to have fallen and injured one of his ankles.
On September 25 Kim failed to appear at the North Korean parliament. State television admitted that he was ill and in “discomfort”.Analysts say it would be wrong to interpret his absence as a sign of weakness. Examination of the parliament’s official proceedings shows that three of Kim’s key men were appointed to posts in the national defence commission, the supreme military body.On September 30 the Chosun Ilbo, a conservative newspaper in Seoul, reported that Kim had undergone surgery on both his ankles and was recovering.
Five days later Kim sent a cordial message to South Korean President Park Geun-hye indicating that all was routine.Nonetheless, Kim did not show up on Friday to pay homage to his father and grandfather at their mausoleum, the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun, for a ceremony marking the 69th anniversary of the founding of the ruling Korean Workers’ party.Instead a basket of flowers bearing his name was placed before the statues of his predecessors. It was the first time he had missed the event since succeeding his father almost three years ago.
The hereditary principle is key to the Kim dynasty. It operates as a personality cult, drawing on notions of racial purity and Confucian ideals in which masculine superiority is paramount.For that reason, attention has focused on other members of the family — and the role they might be playing in Kim’s absence.
Recent days have seen speculation that his sister, Kim Yo-jong, 27, who holds a minor political post, has stepped in to fulfil state duties in his absence. The youngest of five siblings, she is said to have a strong relationship with Kim: they were both born to the same mistress of their father, grew up together in Pyongyang and went to the same boarding school in Switzerland.
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