North Korean Dictator
Is Believed Seriously Ill
U.S. Officials Say Kim
May Have Had Stroke;
Leadership in Doubt
By EVAN RAMSTAD in Seoul and SIOBHAN GORMAN and JAY SOLOMON in Washington
September 9, 2008 2:44 p.m.

North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il has suffered serious health problems and is believed to have had a stroke within the past month, according to U.S. officials.

Mr. Kim didn't attend the country's 60th anniversary celebration Tuesday, according to news agencies with offices in Pyongyang, reinforcing speculation that he is in poor health after reports that he collapsed last month and has been visited by doctors from China.

The U.S. officials said the dictator's current state of health isn't known. A Bush administration official working on North Korea expressed concern about the country's apparent lack of leadership. The official noted that Mr. Kim's ill health has coincided with a significant hardening of rhetoric out of Pyongyang in recent weeks.

North Korea's military, the Korean People's Army, is seeking to appear strong at a time when the country's leadership situation is in flux, the U.S. officials said.

"It's not clear who's in charge," said the U.S. official tracking the situation.

Mr. Kim, who is 67 years old, is rarely seen in public, though he is usually present at major celebrations. North Korea's official media typically reports his presence at government meetings, military posts or businesses, but it has carried no such news since Aug. 14.

Last week, news reports in South Korea said a team of Chinese doctors went to North Korea to visit Mr. Kim and other government officials. And Tuesday, the South Korean newspaper Chosun Ilbo reported, citing a South Korean intelligence official anonymously, that Mr. Kim collapsed on Aug. 22.

Mr. Kim's health is closely watched because the authoritarian control he wields over the government and military is key to the country's stability. Mr. Kim took control after the death in 1994 of his father, Kim Il Sung, who consolidated power in North Korea in 1948. Mr. Kim attended the giant military parades that commemorated North Korea's 50th and 55th anniversaries in 1998 and 2003.

In recent days, South Korean intelligence officials reported that tanks, rocket launchers and other military equipment had been massed outside Pyongyang, North Korea's capital, for this year's parade.

U.S. officials said Washington is trying to maintain a state of calm along the Korean Peninsula in order to guard against the North Korean leadership feeling under siege. These officials said that any signs that the U.S. or South Korean military are on heightened alert could cause the army to overreact.

"You see the possibility of a catastrophic misunderstanding," said the U.S. official.

If Mr. Kim is incapacitated, the day-to-day leadership of North Korea would initially fall to his longtime second-in-command, Kim Yong-nam, whose official title is president of the Presidium of the Supreme People's Assembly. That Mr. Kim, who is 83, has long experience in foreign affairs, led the country's official delegation to the Olympic Games in Beijing last month and presided over Tuesday's anniversary parade.

A lengthy illness would pose a leadership dilemma for North Korea, which has never acknowledged an incapacitating health crisis involving Mr. Kim or his father before him. Outside analysts have little to go on since the North Korean elite have never been seen to face such a test.

The prospect of a leadership vacuum exists because Mr. Kim has taken few steps to groom a successor among his three sons and daughter. Mr. Kim's father, Kim Il Sung, began to groom him to take control of the country in the early 1970s, two decades before Kim Il Sung's death.

Some analysts believe Mr. Kim's brother-in-law, Jang Song-taek, who is 62 years old, is the most likely candidate to take control of the country. Mr. Kim exiled Mr. Jang in 2004, in what some analysts saw as a sign of Mr. Jang's growing power in North Korea. Mr. Jang returned to the country in early 2006 and was reportedly put in charge of economic reforms.

It is unclear why Mr. Jang was sent into exile. Some South Korean reports said it was because of his attendance at a luxurious wedding. But other reports said it was because he posed a power threat to Kim Jong Il. Mr. Jang was likely sent to a labor camp in 2004 and brought back to Pyongyang and kept under house arrest in 2005. Mr. Jang was photographed with Mr. Kim at a Lunar New Year's party in 2006, marking Mr. Jang's return to status.

White House press secretary Dana Perino said Tuesday that the Bush administration was watching the situation, but, "There's nothing I can provide for you now."

The U.S. along with four other countries have been urging North Korea to abandon its pursuit of nuclear weapons. North Korea had pledged in February 2007 to dismantle its nuclear power plant at Yongbyon in exchange for energy and financial assistance, which was valued at one million tons of heavy fuel oil.

But last week, North Korea apparently began reassembling its Yongbyon nuclear reactor, according to U.S. officials. North Korea stopped discharging spent fuel rods from the facility and began returning equipment to the site previously decommissioned as part of a broad agreement.

In Pyongyang, the buildup to Tuesday's military celebration began early this year. Signs proclaiming the 60th anniversary lined major roads in Pyongyang in February, when a large contingent of international journalists accompanied the New York Philharmonic to the city.

Late Tuesday, Russian and Japanese news agencies with offices in Pyongyang reported that the parade occurred but that Mr. Kim didn't attend. North Korea's state news agency issued no reports about the parade.

Write to Evan Ramstad at evan.ramstad@wsj.com, Siobhan Gorman at siobhan.gorman@wsj.com and Jay Solomon at jay.solomon@wsj.com

Maybe he's dying of roneriness . . .

Either that, or simply because Kim gets a kick out of exploding rockets.

Great post.

there are some people that make me go "if i ever bumped into that guy while walking down the street, i definitely would not miss the chance to punch him on the nose".

this guy is one of those guys.

He's three feet tall, you bully.

i don't care. i'll punch him in his adam's apple too.

Kim Jong-il is the face of North Korea, so we tend to blame the scattershot nature of the the country's decision-making process on him. But according to the best South Korean intelligence, he does not function as a supreme dictator. Thus the many mixed signals that emerge from North Korea. For the past twenty years the degree to which the party controls the military or the military controls the party has not been easily defined. There is no clear line of succession, and at the end of Kim Jong-il's life, it is likely that the military will determine the next party leader.

Well, it goes beyond a military dictatorship, doesn't it? Its a military state with about half the GDP going to the military, correct?

I know this guy.
He's a swell fella. Makes the best Bulgogi North of the DMZ.

i like Korean food in general but doesnt this look quite appetizing.
mmmm