Posted on 10/04/2014 5:38:17 PM PDT by Bettyprob
North Korean state media reports also serve to educate local elite who know how to read between the lines. “These are signals but signals only for people in the know,” says Lankov. “I am quite sure the official media reports about his ill health would have been signed off on by the great man himself.”
Another possible hint that Kim is not fully incapacitated, as some of the wilder North Korea rumors have it: a leadership shuffle was recently announced in Pyongyang. “I don’t think that would have been authorized without him,” says Lankov. “He may be undergoing some sort of treatment but I’m pretty sure he’s capable of making management decisions.”
Kim has vanished from public view before, 10 days in July, for example, as well as 18 in January. But this is his longest absence from state news coverage since taking over from his father in December 2011. Still, North Korea-watchers caution against the conspiracy theories involving coups or intricate power plays involving members of the Kim clan. John Delury, a professor at Yonsei University in Seoul, notes that North Korean officials have been busy in recent weeks globe-trotting on a “major charm offensive.”
“If there had been regicide or revolt in Pyongyang, it’s unlikely the wheels of North Korean diplomacy would spin like business as usual,” Delury says. “These episodes [like Kim's absence] reveal as much about us as them—our own assumptions, even obsessions, when it comes to North Korea. We assume North Korea must be on the brink of collapse, so when the young leader suspends his relentless ‘onsite guidance visits’ for a few weeks, we assume he’s been overthrown. Precisely because we have fewer sources of reliable, direct information about North Korea, it pays not to rush to judgment.”
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
He is sick. That sickness is an ideology that is responsible for the loss of freedoms and deaths of countless millions.
So if he is sick, wouldn’t that make staging a coup all the easier?
Maybe he’s suffering from Ebola?! Maybe there was a coup maybe there wasn’t & he is waiting for reactions all around. Few yrs ago Khamenei was absent from public view for a while & suddenly there were all sorts of speculations. He resurfaced in due course.
For me, if I really gave a crap, it would be Time Magazine I’d be going to for my info. Oh yeah.
What “great man?”
North K. military visits south. It also says Kim Dung un has two broken ankles.
I wonder what the smiling #2 man was doing in SK at the Asian Games, then, meeting with smiling reunification officials from the South.
Shoot, I don’t think they ever settled on the shape of the table for ceasefire negotiations after the Korean War.
TIME is one of the LAST places I’d get info from.
I believe the exact opposite of what Time says.
If he was just ill, they’d dress him up and he’d make an appearance and wave to the crowd.
It’s probably something more serious than just a cold, whatever it is.
Let’s just hope get gets a good Liberian doctor.
He’s got, what they used to call “The Kremlin Flu”.
He’s capable of making management decisions.
What kind of management decisions does a deadly tyrant have to make?
We can hope....
Not a Kremlin Kold?
“It also says Kim Dung un has two broken ankles.”
Maybe a VHS tape of the quarter century old movie Misery finally was smuggled across the border, and one of the general officers got an idea.
Anyhow, so Time magazine is now hoping their “Dear Leader” is just sick.... Yeah uh huh.
Yeah Time it's normal for out of the blue the #2 guy just shows up in South Korea with a smile on his face (first time I can recall it) in the public. Yeah that's normal and nothing to see here.
Oh and now all of a sudden out of the blue the two Koreas will be in talks about reunification.
Oh but the “Dear Leader” is just “sick”....
Yeah all is well in North Korea as Time Magazine. Nothing unusual.....(sarcasm off)
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