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Spy agency rejects Kim's second stroke report
South Korea's intelligence agency on Tuesday rejected a Japanese television report that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had suffered a second stroke, with the South playing down further speculation about Kim's hold on power.
- Reuters
- Published: 00:01 November 12, 2008
Seoul: South Korea's intelligence agency on Tuesday rejected a Japanese television report that North Korean leader Kim Jong-il had suffered a second stroke, with the South playing down further speculation about Kim's hold on power.
Japan's TBS TV network said Kim had suffered a second stroke late last month that affected the movement of his left arm and leg and also his ability to speak. The broadcaster quoted a source in South Korea close to a US intelligence agency. "We're viewing it with a low credibility," a South Korean National Intelligence Service official told Reuters.
US and South Korean officials have said Kim suffered a stroke in August, raising questions about succession in Asia's only communist dynasty and about who was making decisions concerning its nuclear weapons programme.
South Korean President Lee Myung-bak, who last month said Kim was on the mend and in control, told a leading local daily the North Korean leader had not lost his grip on the country.
"Chairman Kim Jong-il's condition is that he has no problem looking after state affairs," Lee told the Chosun Ilbo newspaper in an interview published yesterday.
Photographs
The North has released undated still photographs in recent weeks of Kim in public, but analysts said there has been no definitive and timely image that shows him in good health.
"Kim is undergoing rehabilitation and they [North Korea] are confident that he can make an appearance at some point," said Masao Okonogi, Korea expert at Keio University in Tokyo.
Even though North Korea is one of the world's most closed countries, its citizens have probably heard rumours that Kim had a health setback, prompting the state to release the photographs of him at a football match and inspecting troops, analysts said.
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