North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is reportedly in a coma and his sister Kim Yo-jong will be exercising “de facto control” over national and international affairs, South Korean media said quoting a former presidential aide.
Chang Song-min, a former aide to late-South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, told The Korea Herald that the Kim Jong-un became seriously ill amid speculation about his limited public appearances this year.
“I assess him to be in a coma, but his life has not ended. A complete succession structure has not been formed, so Kim Yo-jong is being brought to the fore as the vacuum cannot be maintained for a prolonged period,” Chang said in a social media post.
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He also said on the social media that no North Korean leader would entrust any of his authority to another person unless he was too sick to rule or was removed through a coup.
Chang reiterated his earlier claim that Kim Jong-un is bedridden and unable to rule.
Claiming that he had secured the information from a source in China, he said Kim is “comatose,” going on to detail his own experience in the presidential office to back up the veracity of his claims. He also claimed that all photographs of Kim released by the North in recent months were “fake.”
On Friday, Seoul’s spy agency briefed lawmakers in a closed-door meeting on a new ruling system that Kim seemed to have set up, in which he shares authority and responsibility with a few of his most trusted aides.
However, according to the National Intelligence Agency, this change does not appear to be linked to any major health problem, the report added.