World speculates over Kim Jong Il's health
North Korea denied yesterday that leader Kim Jong Il is seriously ill, granting a foreign news outlet rare interviews with top officials who dismissed reports questioning Kim's health following his absence from a key ceremony.
Speculation has intensified that Kim may have taken ill after he missed a parade Tuesday commemorating the communist state's founding 60 years ago. That followed weeks of absence from public view and rumors that foreign doctors were brought in to the isolated nation to possibly treat him.
North Korea's No. 2 leader and ceremonial head of state, Kim Yong Nam, yesterday said there is "no problem" with the supreme leader, and senior diplomat Song Il Ho also said reports about Kim Jong Il's health are "not true," according to Japan's Kyodo News agency.
"We see such reports as not only worthless, but rather as a conspiracy plot," Song told Kyodo in what the agency said was North Korea's first reaction to the reports.
In another indication that the North's leader is alive, Pyongyang's official Korean Central News Agency said Kim sent a birthday greeting Wednesday to Syria's leader.
Kim wished Syrian President Bashar Assad good health and success.
South Korea's main spy agency reported to a parliamentary committee that Kim suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, but he remains conscious and "is able to control the situation," Seoul's Yonhap news agency said.
The National Intelligence Service also told the committee that Kim is in a "recoverable and manageable condition," and that the North is not in a "power vacuum," Yonhap said.
NIS officials could not confirm the report.
Comments