North Korea on Sunday released photographs of leader Kim Jong-Il watching a football match, in what outside analysts say was a move aimed at quelling mounting speculation over the state of his health.
The North’s official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) and other media carried the undated photos of Kim, which they said showed him watching two army teams play, according to Seoul’s Unification Ministry, the body that monitors North Korean media.
Analysts here said Pyongyang was struggling to calm jitters about Kim, who Seoul says is recovering from a stroke and brain surgery in mid-August.
In one of the photos published by the ministry, Kim sits smiling on a sofa inside a glass structure wearing his trademark sunglasses. His full cheeks and bouffant hair look the same as usual.
With his deputies standing or sitting nearby, Kim wears a brown winter jacket. Trees near him have autumnal leaves.
The North’s state television and Rodong Simnum newspaper also carried 14 different photos of Kim apparently watching the game and standing and giving instructions to his deputies outside an unidentified building. There are also pictures of players on the football pitch.
None of the North Korean media said when or where the photos were taken. KCNA earlier on Sunday reported that Kim watched the match between two army teams, Mangyongbong and Jebi, but did not say when.
The National Intelligence Service, Seoul’s main spy agency, said it was analysing the photos, but it refused to elaborate.
”North Koreans are desperately stepping up their efforts to send a message: Mr Kim is doing well. He is firmly in control,” professor Kim Yong-Hyun, a North Korean expert at Seoul’s Dongguk University, said.
Seoul’s Yonhap news agency noted there was no single photo of both Kim and the game featured in the same frame. Instead, the released photos carry separate images of Kim and of the game.
Yang Moo-Jin, a professor at the University of North Korean Studies in Seoul, told Yonhap the photo release was primarily to stop possible unrest at home.
”The absence of [publicity for] Kim, who serves as the apex of the North’s society, would inevitably cause social loosening,” Yang said, adding Kim still had a tight grip on the reclusive country.
The release of the photographs was the latest effort by Pyongyang apparently aimed at suggesting Kim is well, following widespread overseas reports that the 66-year-old suffered a stroke in mid-August.
Kim Yeong-In, a neurologist at Seoul’s Kangnam St Mary’s Hospital, said the pictures appeared to support the stroke theory.
”He looks to have a paralysis on the left side of his body, if he can move only the right hand as seen in the photos,” he told Yonhap.
Kim’s health is the subject of intense speculation because he has not publicly nominated a successor to run the impoverished and nuclear-armed nation.
After he failed to attend a September 9 parade marking the country’s 60th anniversary, South Korean officials said he had undergone brain surgery following a stroke around mid-August but was recovering well. — AFP
