Tag: Kim Jong-un

I don’t think you needed to have a spy agency tell you that Kim Jong-un is in poor health when anyone with two eyes can see he is overweight and does not move well:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un speaks to a spy satellite launch committee in footage broadcast by the state-controlled Korean Central Television on May 16. A pack of cigarettes and an ashtray flank him on the desk. [YONHAP]

South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) told a parliamentary committee that North Korean leader Kim Jong-un suffers from multiple health problems tied to his hard drinking and smoking habits, a People Power Party (PPP) lawmaker told reporters Wednesday.  
   
According to Rep. Yoo Sang-bum, who serves as the executive secretary of the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee, the spy agency briefed lawmakers on Kim’s current state of health and said the North Korean leader likely suffers from insomnia and other ”serious sleeping disorders.”  
   
The NIS also told the committee that the leader is “importing large quantities of foreign cigarettes, such as Marlboro and Dunhill, and high-end liquor,” according to the PPP lawmaker. 

Joong Ang Ilbo

You can read more at the link, but something of interest is that the NIS estimates that Kim Jong-un weighs 308 pounds.

This is a really good question considering the multiple deadly provocations that North Korea has launched against South Korea. Basically a warrant will not be issued because no state wants to bring it up and investigators cannot get into North Korea to investigate any accusations:

The International Criminal Court’s issuing of an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin is “one of the most courageous steps taken” and “one that would eventually lead to accountability,” according to the war crimes court’s former president Hon. Song Sang-hyun.

However, bringing similar actions of international justice against North Korea’s leader Kim Jong-un would be far more challenging, according to the three-term ICC judge. (…..)

On whether the leader of North Korea can be subject to ICC actions like Putin, Song said there had been an earlier attempt that wound up closing before the investigation could go forward.

In 2010, an investigation had opened against his predecessor and father Kim Jong-il by then-ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo. His office said at the time it was looking into two 2010 provocations by North Korea — the shelling of Yeonpyeong Island near the maritime border and the sinking of the Cheonan, a South Korean military vessel. The investigation closed the following year in 2011 with his death.

Song said the investigation of the second-generation Kim was launched ex-officio by the ICC prosecutor and then authorized by the Court’s pre-trial chamber.

“The problem is it wasn’t feasible for our prosecutors to enter North Korea to conduct the necessary investigation. I remember we were trying to seek cooperation from China, which also would not have gone well,” he said. (……)

Song is skeptical about whether the ICC’s jurisdiction can reach Kim.

Aside from an ICC prosecutor deciding to pursue a case, as Moreno-Ocampo had done, the two other ways that an ICC investigation can be initiated are through a referral from the UN Security Council or a complaint by a state party. Here is where the challenge lies for an investigation of North Korea, he said.

He said while he had seen numerous complaints against the North Korean leader submitted by individuals and organizations during his time as the Court’s judge and president, most of them were dismissed.

“Only a state party can bring a case to the Court,” he explained.

He said that given the state of things, he believes it’s improbable that a state party government would file a complaint against Kim Jong-un.

“I don’t think the South Korean government would, much less the governments of North Korea’s other neighbors like China or Japan,” he said.

Korea Herald

You can read more at the link.

It is interesting that the North Koreans allowed this person to be pictured in the first place if his position is so sensitive:

Mystery surrounds a man in military uniform who was pictured in the state media next to North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as he watched a drill simulating a tactical nuclear attack on Monday. 

Unprecedentedly, the man’s face has been pixelated out, sending observers into a frenzy of speculation. 

Judging by his uniform, the man is a two-star army general. To make the mystery complete, he is wearing sunglasses and a face mask.

An intelligence source here offered little illumination. “He’s presumed to be an official whose identity is being kept secret like the commander of a tactical nuclear operations unit,” the source speculated. 

Chosun Ilbo

You can read more at the link.

Not only has he supposedly banned the name “Ju-ae”, but has also forced people already with that name to change it:

North Korean state TV on Sunday aired footage of leader Kim Jong-un’s daughter, Ju-ae, riding a white horse in an apparent display of her legitimacy as a descendant of the ruling family’s “Paekdu bloodline.”

In the footage on Korean Central Television, Ju-ae is seen mounted on a white horse during Wednesday’s massive military parade staged in Pyongyang to mark the 75th founding anniversary of the North’s armed forces.

The white horse is symbolic of the Kim family, and leader Kim Jong-un was famously seen riding one on Mount Paekdu in October 2019, eight months after the Hanoi summit between Kim and then U.S. President Donald Trump broke down.

Meanwhile, U.S. broadcaster Radio Free Asia quoted sources as saying Saturday that North Korean authorities are forcing people named Ju-ae to change their names.

North Korea previously prohibited the use of the same name as all the former and current leaders — Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un, the broadcaster said.

Yonhap

By the way Yonhap, that picture does not look like Kim Jong-un’s daughter.

Kim Jong-un seems to really be enjoying bringing his daughter around with him on these visits now:

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has visited the barracks of the country’s general-grade officers together with his daughter to mark the 75th anniversary of the founding of the armed forces, according to state media Wednesday.

In a speech at a banquet Tuesday following his visit, Kim praised the Korean People’s Army (KPA) as “the strongest troops in the world,” according to the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).

“For the everlasting peace, prosperity and development on this land, we’ve developed great and absolute power while enduring so many sufferings and pain,” Kim said, apparently pointing to the North’s nuclear force.

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but Kim did not make any comments towards the ROK and the United States.

Some interesting quotes from Kim Jong-un in Mike Pompeo’s new book:

North Korea and its leader Kim Jong-un are not bothered at all by the U.S. military presence in South Korea, former U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo argued in a memoir published Tuesday.

They rather consider U.S. troops in South Korea as a protection against Chinese dominance, according to Pompeo.

Pompeo said the North Korean leader had raised the issue of U.S.-South Korea joint military exercises during their first meeting in Pyongyang.

“I insinuated that he was a little hypocritical to get worked up about them, given how his planes and rockets could within minutes, or perhaps seconds, lay waste to the city of Seoul, South Korea, a city of ten million people and only a few dozen kilometers from the demilitarized zone (DMZ),” he wrote. (…..)

Pompeo said he had also told Kim that the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) had “consistently told the United States that American forces leaving South Korea would make Chairman Kim happy.”

“At this, Kim laughed and pounded on the table in sheer joy, exclaiming that the Chinese were liars,” wrote Pompeo.

“He (Kim) said that he needed the Americans in South Korea to protect him from the CCP, and that the CCP needs the Americans out so they can treat the peninsula like Tibet and Xinjiang,” he added.

Pompeo also offered to U.S. policymakers: “expanding U.S. missile and ground capabilities on the Korean Peninsula won’t bother the North Koreans at all.”

Yonhap

You can read more at the link, but Kim also told Pompeo that he was willing to denuclearize which I have never believed. So saying that he doesn’t mind the US military presence in the ROK just may just be something Kim may have thought Pompeo wanted to hear.