Nearly three weeks since North Korea's Kim Jong Un was last seen in public, Pres. Trump and senior South Korean leaders are downplaying or even outright dismissing reports about his condition.
After Kim missed the secretive country's most important national holiday, rumors of his demise have only grown, even as a new theory gains support -- social distancing against theOn Tuesday, Trump declined to answer questions about Kim, telling reporters at the White House,"I don't want to comment on it. I just wish him well."
President Donald Trump and North Korea's leader Kim Jong-un walk on North Korean soil toward South Korea in the Demilitarized Zone on June 30, 2019, in Panmunjom, Korea. Kim was last seen at a communist party politburo meeting on April 11, leading the party's discussion on prevention of the novel coronavirus, according to photos published by state media.
"So far, it is considered that there is no unusual movement in North Korea," South Korean Foreign Minister Kang Kyung-wha told parliament during a hearing on Tuesday. "We don't have any information that there's an outbreak, but we are watching how they respond to it," a State Department official told ABC News last week. But several Korea watchers have said given North Korea's reliance on trade with China, from where the pandemic first spread, there are likely cases in the country.
This Thursday, April 23, 2020, satellite image provided by Planet Labs and annotated by 38 North, a website specializing in North Korea studies, shows the Leadership Railway Station in Wonsan, North Korea.Since the holiday, the core of North Korea's elites that often surround him have also been absent from public view, according to Thae Yong Ho, North Korea's former deputy ambassador to the United Kingdom who became the country's highest-ranking diplomat to defect in 2016.
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