Kim Jong Un reportedly in worse condition than we thought
In the five days since CNN reported that North Korean dictator Kim Jong Un was in “grave danger” following surgery, details have been hard to come by. But now a slew of new reports suggest that, if nothing else, details are starting to leak out about what’s been doing on.
Last night a Hong Kong TV outlet reported that Kim Jong Un was dead. Earlier today TMZ wrote about what the Hong Kong TV outlet said. Numerous observers mistook this for TMZ independently confirming Kim was dead, but that’s not what was actually said. Even if he isn’t dead, a Japanese news outlet is now reporting that Kim is in a vegetative state. This is interesting for a couple reasons.
First, while the Hong Kong based outlet has ties to the Chinese government and its report about Kim may therefore just be propaganda, the Japanese outlet is free press and would have no reason to make up the story. Second, this mirrors an NBC News tweet from several days ago, which was quickly deleted, that claimed Kim was “brain dead.”
So what’s really going on? We have no way of knowing for sure. At the least, if Kim Jong Un were able to get in front of the TV cameras and come off as being in good health right now, he’d be doing it, so that the reports of his vulnerability don’t result in some kind of palace coup against him. His ongoing absence from public view suggests that, at the least, he’s in too poor of condition to get in front of a camera.
