Where is Kim Jong-un?

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BY BARBARA DEMICK

The New Yorker

A man at a railway station in Seoul, South Korea, watches a TV news program showing the North Korean leader, Kim Jong-un, on October 9, 2014.

CREDIT

PHOTOGRAPH BY AHN YOUNG-JOON / AP

Kim Jong-un is a most elusive man. Until a year before he became North Korea’s leader, in 2011, nobody knew his age or the correct spelling of his name, and no one had seen a photograph of him as an adult. A Japanese television station mistakenly aired a photograph of an overweight South Korean construction worker it claimed was heir to the North Korean throne. All that changed after his father, Kim Jong Il, died. After a respectable period of bereavement, Kim Jong-un became the most photographed man in North Korea, and his image became familiar around the world. There he was, strolling with his photogenic wife, sitting on a horse, inspecting factories, riding a roller coaster at Pyongyang’s funfair, hanging out with Dennis Rodman. And now, suddenly, he has vanished again.

Kim hasn’t been seen in public since September 3rd, when he was photographed with his wife at a concert. He failed to show up Friday to the celebration marking the sixty-ninth anniversary of the founding of the ruling Workers’ Party. Pyongyang’s mouthpiece news service, K.C.N.A., reported simply that he had sent a flower basket.

Kim’s conspicuous absence gave fresh life to rumors that the young leader might be seriously ill, or have been deposed in a coup d’état, or worse. The removal of the third-generation Kim could portend the long-awaited collapse of one of the world’s most anachronistic and closed nations, a country that has revolved around the Kim family since 1948.

The South Korean press in particular has been a source of speculation. The Chosun Ilbo, a conservative South Korean daily newspaper and a repository of unflattering and often unsubstantiated coverage of North Korea, has variously reported that Kim, who is around thirty-one, is suffering from gout or that he fractured one or both ankles. The newspaper quoted an unnamed official who suggested that the injury was due to Kim Jong-un’s ballooning weight and his preference for wearing stacked heels, like his father, to elevate his height.

The hurt-his-leg theory was supported by television footage from the summer in which Kim appeared to be limping, and by a documentary aired on North Korean television on September 25th that referred to “our marshal, who keeps lighting the path for the people, like the flicker of a flame, despite suffering discomfort.’’

A wilder story comes from a North Korean poet turned defector turned author who goes by the pseudonym Jang Jin-sung. Jang has been widely quoted saying that Kim Jong-un was quietly nudged aside last year, becoming a mere figurehead, and that his younger sister might be eclipsing him in power.

The credibility of this report, though, is low: although Jang has gained a reputation as a shrewd analyst of North Korean politics, he defected a decade ago (and is now promoting a memoir, “Dear Leader”). According to one Pyongyang-based diplomat, however, that sister, Kim Yo-jong, is frequently seen with Kim Jong-un, effectively serving as his head of protocol. In her late twenties and as lean as her brother is fat, Kim Yo-jong is a full-blooded sibling. In a cutthroat dynasty in which the loyalty of half siblings and older brothers may be in doubt, this sister might be expected to be the only person whom the young leader can trust. (There is also a full brother, Kim Jong-chul, who is less in evidence in the North Korean capital.) Interestingly, Kim Jong Il had a similar relationship with his sister, Kim Kyong-hui, who was his constant companion. She fell from grace, however, after his death, and her husband, Jang Song-taek, was theatrically purged and executed by Kim Jong-un last year.

Sue Mi Terry, a former Central Intelligence Agency analyst who now teaches at Columbia University, told me that to determine if a coup were occurring in North Korea she would look for signs of unusual troop movements or border controls tightening—neither of which has been reported. “There are no signs right now that anything has changed in North Korea, except that Kim Jong-un is not out and about,’’ she said. Terry added that, historically, it was not so unusual for a North Korean leader to vanish from public view—“His father would go AWOL every now and then”—and that it was Kim Jong-un’s appetite for publicity that made his absence so notable: “We are used to seeing him around.”

Scott Snyder, an analyst with the Council on Foreign Relations, who was in Seoul last week, told me that South Korean officials at the Ministry of Unification, which handles relations with the North, also attached no particular significance to Kim Jong-un’s absence. Snyder said that they were more interested in a surprise offer by North Korea to reopen talks. With less than twenty-four hours’ notice, three senior North Korean officials showed up at Incheon for the closing ceremonies of the Asian Games on October 4th, all handshakes and smiles. The head of the delegation was Hwang Pyong-so, the top political officer of the North Korean military, who is rising fast in the regime and is possibly the country’s second-in-command. As for the suggestion that Kim Jong-un is no longer in charge, Snyder said, “these are the usual low-credibility rumors.’’

North Korean rumors are an art form. Perhaps because it is such an impenetrable country, perhaps because its rulers are so senselessly brutal, people are inclined to heed outlandish claims. Two years ago, a North Korea watchers’ website, NKnews.org, summarized the strangest ones: North Korean scientists have discovered evidence of unicorns; Kim Jong Il hit eighteen straight holes-in-one the first time he played golf; Kim Jong Il kidnapped a South Korean film director in a bid to remake “Godzilla.”

The rumors persist because occasionally—as with that last one—they have some substance. Kim Jong-un did in fact have his own uncle executed, although it appears untrue that Jang was stripped naked and fed to a pack of hungry dogs, a story that originated with a Chinese microblogger. As the South Korean Defense Minister, Han Min-koo, put it to a parliamentary committee on Tuesday, according to Chosun Ilbo‘s not very helpful paraphrase: “Some media reports about Kim are true and some are false.”

Barbara Demick is the author of “Nothing to Envy: Ordinary Lives in North Korea.” She is currently on a fellowship at the Council on Foreign Relations.