N. P. Upadhyaya, Kathmandu: The missing ruthless North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un is dead, so believed first a defector Ji Seong from the North who sneaked into the South in the recent years.
He was the first Korean to have “guessed” that Kim may have died after the reported heart surgery.
However, Ji Seong was not sure about the death of his former ruler, yet his logic had been that a person “who has gone heart surgery doesn’t take this much time for health recovery”.
Notably, the ruthless North Korean tyrant Kim went missing for almost three weeks or so and made the speculation market warm with his sudden disappearance.
Absconder Ji Seong’s guess was not that absurd though.
The so called Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) turncoat said, so wrote a South Korean media source a few days ago that, “I’ve wondered how long he could have endured after cardiovascular surgery. I’ve been informed that Kim died last weekend,”
This defector Seong nonetheless gave a surprising clue that the Rocket man’s evaporation from the political scene both from within and without could have been “a complicated succession issue.”
However, no rumors of a coup emanated from anywhere during the days of Kim’s missing.
Though the international media outlets kept on guessing that this could be one strong possibility.
Seong’s guesswork may be close to true however, no such rumors have come to the open so far even as of today.
However, Ji Seong has reportedly “apologized” for his somewhat blunt remarks on Kim after the puzzling reappearance of Kim Jong Un after three weeks.
Though a power tussle can’t be ruled out in North Korea and the foremost contender being baby Kim’s own younger sister Kim Yo Jong who in effect is the real political player assisting brother
Kim in all of his international appointments that included Kim’s meeting with the South Korean President Moon Jae-in and later she also helped her despot brother to meet with the US President
Donald Trump first in Singapore and later in Vietnam.
She reportedly ‘set the agenda’ for talks of his brother with President Trump both in Singapore and Hanoi.
If so then observers in Nepal believe that Ms. Kim Yo Jong may have been in close contact with China and South Korea prior to the meet of her brother Kim with President Trump in Singapore and Vietnam.
President Moon also, needless to say, encouraged Sister Kim to take the lead in convincing her brother Kim to talk to President Donald Trump.
Sister Kim Yo-jong was in South Korea to attend the Winter Olympics, it has been given to understand.
This visit may have brought her closer hopefully to the South Korean (Republic of Korea-ROK) President Moon Jae-in.
President Moon though preferred not to be in scene as peace in the Korean peninsula meant a direct positive impact on his own country’s peace and stability.
The fact is that Kim Jong Un’s one-on-one meetings with President Trump in Singapore and Vietnam had assured the world population that this missile man would not terrify the world with his erratic use of the nuclear capabilities that the North is in possession.
To be more specific, it was first the President of the Republic of South Korea Moon Jae-in who broke the ice and began talking to the mysterious dictator in order to free the Korean peninsula from a possible nuclear catastrophe.
The nuclear threat remains intact though.
President Moon definitely may have enjoyed the tacit support from panicked Japan and to some extent of the Chinese regime though China is talked to be the “de facto” protector or say the guardian of the impoverished North Korea’s ruler whether it is Kim IL Sung, Kim Jong-Il or the present sitting ruling tyrant Kim Jong Un.
President Moon later acted, to put the record straight, like a mediator in between US President Trump and the rocket man (as he is called by some world leader) Kim Jong-Un and then the meets materialized in Singapore and Vietnam materialize.
Since then the relations in between the US President Trump and North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un are talked to be normal.
To some extent, these meets between the North Korean leader and President Trump definitely has brought peace in the peninsula at least for some time in the immediate past.
President Trump is on record to have said even when the NK leader went missing in the recent weeks that his relations with Kim Jong-Un was “good and that he knew the whereabouts of missing Kim”.
He however, didn’t disclose the location of missing Kim Jong-Un if he knew at all.
Conversely, what the NK leader thinks of President Trump is not known because the despot(s) the world over generally have a habit of talking double and thus this set of autocrats are not trustworthy.
Their words and deeds differ.
Now let’s talk more about Kim’s highly ambitious and a determined sister Kim Yo Jong:
Kim Yo-jong was born on 26 September 1987 in the North. She is a North Korean politician who has been the First Deputy Director and de facto leader of the Propaganda and Agitation Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK) since 2014.
Naturally she too is a ruthless woman like her brother as she has been indoctrinated in her parental home by late father and living brother-the present day Korean tyrant for whom the common people were no more than inferior creatures.
Kim Yo-Jong, needless to say is talked to have inherited all the ills from his father and brother.
The BBC world news dated May 1/2020 writes that “Kim Yo-jong first gained international attention in 2018, when she was the first member of the Kim dynasty to visit South Korea. She was part of the delegation to the Winter Olympics, where North and South competed as a joint team.
According to the BBC, the 2018 thaw which followed saw her, as stated earlier, working alongside her brother as he set off on an international diplomacy path, meeting South Korean President Moon Jae-in, China’s Xi Jinping and most importantly the US President Donald Trump.
Media reports claim that Kim Yo-Jong’s role in the North Korean power structure was elevated first in October 2017 by her brother-the missile man.
It was a time when Ms. Kim was promoted to the powerful NK politburo. Before that, she’d been influential as vice-director of the propaganda machine-a role she is thought to still hold wherein she works on enhancing her brother’s public image in the country and outside, claims BCC dated May 1/2020.
Sister Kim is a married women. She is married to the son of Choe Ryong-hae, the powerful party secretary and Kim Jong-un’s second in command. If true that would give her significant status, adds the BBC.
Could this higher status be a threat to Kim Jong Un’s rule eventually?
This means she is a lady who wields comfortable power in the country.
But is this power enough to stage a coup? Keep on guessing.
This means that she is armored with two powerful bracelets: first she is the dear sister of the callous brother Kim and secondly she happens to be the daughter-in-law of Choe Ryong-hae, a powerful secretary in the present scheme of things in the North Korean power arrangement.
Whatever it may be, she is very powerful in today’s North Korea political structure and her authority is supposed to have increased during Kim Jon-Un’s vanishing from the NK political scene for over three weeks (whatever the reasons may have been that remains a mystery yet) as this contributed his sister to consolidate her power base in North Korea, say international media sources.
Whether Brother Kim Jong-Un likes it or not, Sister Ms. Kim is here as the next possible alternate leader for the North Korean people, opine observers in Nepal who generally watch the events in and around Korean peninsula.
Former UML leader Madhav Kumar Nepal is very close to Kim Jon-Un, as he claims.
(Mr. Nepal is equally close to the South Koreans. Mr. Nepal once claimed that he in essence facilitated the talks in between Kim Jon-Un with President Trump in Singapore. Though the common UML folks do not believe Mr. Nepal’s near to absurd claim).
She is a women with complex character and also a Kaniz school graduate, Switzerland.
Brother Kim and Sister Ms. Kim (some four years younger to Kim Jong-Un) studied in the same school in Switzerland.
The South Korean stance: While many a wild guess works were in the world-media-bazaar regarding the exact locations of the missing Rocket man in these past three weeks, the South Korean population and the government together with the media combined, remained firm in its reiteration that the missing north Korean leader was not dead and that he was very much kicking and alive and that he was slowly recovering from the “heart surgery” that he had recently undergone.
The government sources in Seoul disseminated the news about missing authoritarian ruler saying that everything was fine in the North and that nothing unusual of the sort have had taken place or observed in the North during Kim’s sudden withdrawal from Pyongyang.
Perhaps the expressions from the ROK media outlets gave the sweet hint that “Blood was thicker than water”.
After all, the Koreans possess the same blood whether it is North or the South.
A British tabloid The Sun very daringly reported that the missing Kim Jon-un was enjoying at a harem of about 2, 000 sex slaves during the “missing days” from Pyongyang.
Not impossible for a despot like Kim Jong-Un.
On Friday, Kim suddenly made his first public appearance amid the death rumors at ribbon-cutting ceremony for a fertilizer plant in North Korea.
According to the Sky News Australia “Kim, 36, could have deliberately pretended to be dead by going missing for 20 days, to know whether he was surrounded by usurpers in his inner circle, writes the SUN dated May 4/2020.
The British tabloid adds claiming that Kim disappeared from state media for three weeks-an unusually long time for the photogenic leader-sparking a flurry of speculation about his health and whereabouts.
A news report prepared by Jihye Lee, Kanga Kong and Maria Jose Valero for the PRINT dated 2nd May talks about the end of Kim’s hibernation and reappearance in the public.
The news prepared by these media men run like this: “Kim Jong Un ended his almost three-week absence from public events with a factory visit, an appearance that will ease, but not end, concern about the stability of the North Korean regime and control of its nuclear arsenal.
The world leaders fear the misuse of the nuclear capabilities by the erratic North Korea’s captain-Kim Jong Un.
The Print news men further write that “Kim presided over a May Day ceremony to mark the completion of the Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory northeast of the capital Pyongyang, the official Korean Central News Agency reported early Saturday.
The North Korean State media in the recent days released photos showing the North Korean leader in a black Mao suit cutting a ribbon outside the facility, which non-proliferation experts say, writes Jihye Lee, Kanga Kong and Maria Jose Valero, could be used to help produce fissile material for nuclear bombs.
The CNN also confirms that the North Korean leader has resurfaced. The CNN news, May 2nd/2020 says quoting the North Korean State run media that, “Kim Jong Un made an appearance at a May Day celebration, at which he was pictured smoking and laughing”.
Similarly, Timothy W. Martin and Andrew Jeong write for the Wall Street Journal dated May 4/2020 that “North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s appearance in the state media, after a near to three-week absence set off rumors about his health, reaffirms a status quo that is unlikely to shake up stalled denuclearization talks with the U.S. or change the regime’s pattern of weapons testing.
Though Kim Jong-Un has resurfaced from his three week(s) long hibernation period, however, question remains intact as to whether he has finally recovered from his heart ailments? Is he now a fatigued person? Are there the chances of staging a coup against Kim Jong Un’s regime? Is Kim’s own younger sister Kim Yo-Jong a real threat to his despotic rule?
However, the office of South Korean President Moon Jae-in- who had helped mediate Trump’s first summit with Kim almost two years ago, as said in the earlier paragraphs, has said the appearance of Kim Jong-Un confirmed its statements that the North Korea leader had been governing as normal. “Today’s public activity is not anything special, and the office does not make much of it,” the presidential office said.
According to the PRINT, the U.S. President Donald Trump has declined to comment on Kim’s reemergence besides telling reporters that he “may” speak with the North Korean leader soon.
“We’ll have something to say about it at the appropriate time,” Trump hinted the reporters in Washington.
Having said all these, observers in Nepal fear that the ambitious lady Kim Yo jong, the younger sister of Kim Jong-Un may try to replace his elder brother. The chances remain. That’s all.