As questions mount about the health of Kim Jong Un, an underlying concern looms for spies, policymakers, academics and curious news-consumers alike. What do we really know about the man who leads North Korea? By APklug .
FILE - In this March 2, 2020, file photo provided by the North Korean government, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un inspects a military drill at undisclosed location in North Korea. As questions mount about the health of Kim Jong Un, an underlying concern looms for spies, policymakers, academics and curious news-consumers alike. In South Korea, Kim is seen as both demon and statesman. He has repeatedly threatened to burn Seoul to the ground.
Sandwiched amid goliaths, North Korea is a small, impoverished, extraordinarily proud nation that through sheer force of will — and a relentless cult of personality built around a single family — has been at the center of a half-century security headache for its neighbors. What’s uncontested is that Kim hasn’t appeared in public since an April 11 meeting focused on the coronavirus. This sort of vanishing act has happened before, but what has set rumors ablaze now is that for the first time as leader he missed the most important holiday of the North Korean year, the April 15 celebration of his grandfather’s birth.
In South Korea, he is seen as both demon and statesman. He has repeatedly threatened to burn Seoul to the ground. He has also rolled out the red carpet for a visit to Pyongyang by South Korea’s president and sent his own sister south for the 2018 Olympics. Kim was likely born in 1984 and attended boarding school for several years in Switzerland. Early on, some observers argued that his time in the West would lead him to eventually embrace Chinese-style reforms.
Kim has shown a growing confidence on the world stage, most clearly with the high-stakes diplomacy that followed a run of nuclear and missile tests in 2017 that had many fearing war.
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