# Kim Jung-un in very serious condition **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 21, 2020, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241 "2020-04-21T02:29:58Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![HMS\_Irruncible](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hms_irruncible/32/7394_2.png) [@HMS\_Irruncible](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/HMS_Irruncible)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2020, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/61 "2020-04-24T20:40:18Z")
> [@TruCelt](#): > > I think the rather cogent point (if you look at the photo he linked) was how very hard she she looks. It’s not mere facial structure, but seems to be very much a matter of her character shining through onto her face. > > And I’m usually the first to complain about women being judged by their looks. No, she looks mean as a snake. Not drawing any character inferences here, but she’s a huge contrast to the porky, jolly-looking Kim Jong-Un. I don’t know what that means. I remember in the military a lot of people made a point to put on their war face in their professional headshot photos. I suspect NK is a lot like that, until you rise to the top level and have to project that benevolent avuncular persona that the Kims do when they want to inspire. ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2020, 8:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/62 "2020-04-24T20:49:34Z")
There are also plenty of pics of Kim Jung Un, his daddy, and his granddaddy all smiley and looking jovial. Who knew they were such amiable chaps? I even saw a pic once of Linda Tripp smiling. Imagine that! > [@Baker](#): > > Bolding mine. I’m female!!!:D:p Then why isn’t your screen name [**Baxter**](http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/11/a-bakester-was-once-the-proper-word-to-refer-to-a-female-baker/)? ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2020, 9:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/63 "2020-04-24T21:28:34Z")
What’s with the “Jung” spelling in this thread? I’ve never seen Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un’s names spelled with a _U_. (It reminds me of John Oliver’s odd habit of pronuncing of “Jong” as “Yong.” Is there something I should know that I don’t know?) ---
**Author:** ![Pardel-Lux](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pardel-lux/32/20182_2.png) [@Pardel-Lux](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Pardel-Lux)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2020, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/64 "2020-04-24T21:31:53Z")
> [@Doug\_K](#): > > The most disturbing thing about this is realizing when Kim Il Sung’s birthday was. > > Death of Lincoln, Titanic Sank, the Belfast Blitz, Kim Il Sung’s birth. > > Why did so many tragic historical events fall on my birthday? Just be glad that you were not born on Nov. 9th. That is the really fateful date. Then there is perception bias bc. you follow the date you were born more closely: I am a happy man, I was born on Dec. 10th and only see lots of blissful Nobel laureates. ---
**Author:** ![Corry\_El](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/ecae2f/32.png) [@Corry\_El](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Corry_El)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2020, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/65 "2020-04-24T21:54:53Z")
> [@california\_jobcase](#): > > I remember it being used as an example of the way sans serif fonts suck when a capital I precedes one or more lower-case Ls. Also, I seem to remember George W made that mistake and called him Kim Jung the 2nd. GWB did once call him ‘Kim Jung 2’, close. Various other politicians have said ‘the second’, including Rick Perry in a press release as recently as the year of the dictator’s death, 2011. That was a little tricky given not only the difficulty in reading ‘il’ in some fonts, but that he was essentially ‘the 2nd’ in the Kim dynasty after father Kim Il Sung, though obviously not named Kim Jung I, Kim Jung II etc. Also I’m OK at the end of the day with some rough standard of what ‘you should know’ about stuff like that which includes knowing it’s not II. But, if you want to get picky it’s fairly common for more ‘polished’ politicians and media people in the US to mistake the convention for abbreviating the Kim dynasty leaders’ names\* and very common (more often than not) for them to mispronounce parts of it.\*\* \*Kim Jung Un, abbreviated to family name, Kim. I’ve heard more than one public figure abbreviate it to Un, in the style that would actually be correct for a Vietnamese name (first syllable is still the surname in Vietnamese, from China, as in Korea, but you typically abbreviate to the second part of the person’s given name). \*\*partly down to the vagaries of transliteration. ‘Un’ (silver, interestingly that wasn’t known in the ROK till the name was seen written in Chinese characters in Chinese media, since DPRK media pretty much never prints Chinese characters but only hangul letters; everybody in ROK knows what their _own_ name is in Chinese characters) is not like ‘the un-cola’ and definitely not like ‘uno’ without the ‘o’, both of which are common from media/political types who think they are knowledgeable because they don’t say Kim Jung II. 🙂 The current ROK transliteration ‘eun’ is closer. We’re all ignorant about a huge amount of stuff. ---
**Author:** ![california\_jobcase](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9d8465/32.png) [@california\_jobcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/california_jobcase)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2020, 10:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/66 "2020-04-24T22:10:03Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > What’s with the “Jung” spelling in this thread? I’ve never seen Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un’s names spelled with a _U_. > > (It reminds me of John Oliver’s odd habit of pronuncing of “Jong” as “Yong.” Is there something I should know that I don’t know?) [SIZE=“4”]Well, I was just following the crowd here. I Googled it and didn’t find a single Jung spelling. Ignorance fought, I suppose. I still hate sans serif fonts.[/SIZE] ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2020, 10:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/67 "2020-04-24T22:57:33Z")
> [@Acsenray](#): > > What’s with the “Jung” spelling in this thread? I’ve never seen Kim Jong-il and Kim Jong-un’s names spelled with a _U_. > > (It reminds me of John Oliver’s odd habit of pronuncing of “Jong” as “Yong.” Is there something I should know that I don’t know?) > **[Kim Jong Un](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong-un)** > > Kim Jong Un\[c\]\[d\]\[e\] (English: /ˌkɪm dʒɒŋˈʊn, -ˈuːn/; Korean: 김정은; born 8 January 1982, 1983 or 1984)\[f\] is a North Korean politician who has been supreme leader of North Korea since 2011 and the leader of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) since 2012.\[g\] He is the third son of Kim Jong Il, who was North Korea's second supreme leader from 1994 until his death in 2011, and Ko Yong Hui. He is a grandson of Kim Il Sung, who was the founder and first supreme leader of North Korea from its establish... If you scroll on down you can see how his name is spelled in the Korean script. When I learned Han-gul, the Korean script I found that they use sounds we do not, and vice versa. The right hand letter in the middle syllable is, I think, more clesely pronounced as a flat “0” sound, but it’s been a long time and I suppose, depending on how the letter is pronounced, it could be “u”, as in “uh”, not oo\> Korean does not use an “f” sound for example so when an English word with that sound is transliterated into Hangul, you can’t spell it just right. Fanta Cola comes out more like Banta. I saw the bottole when I was stationed in South Korea. The English “R” has no duplicate in Hangul. The letter used that is closest to it in English is a sound we don’t use. So Lee, Li, Ri, or Rhee, are all equally wrong spellings of one of the most common Korean surnames. ---
**Author:** ![elbows](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/b3f665/32.png) [@elbows](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elbows)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2020, 11:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/68 "2020-04-24T23:05:54Z")
I just read he’s dead! (Vice director HongKongSateliteTV) ---
**Author:** ![Aspenglow](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/aspenglow/32/76_2.png) [@Aspenglow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aspenglow)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2020, 11:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/69 "2020-04-24T23:16:01Z")
Huh. I guess when Rick Wilson writes that everything Trump touches dies, he really means it. :dubious: According to [Reuters](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-northkorea-politics-exclusive/exclusive-china-sent-team-including-medical-experts-to-advise-on-north-koreas-kim-sources-say-idUSKCN2263DW)… > [@](#): > > China has dispatched a team to North Korea including medical experts to advise on North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, according to three people familiar with the situation. > > The trip by the Chinese doctors and officials comes amid conflicting reports about the health of the North Korean leader. Reuters was unable to immediately determine what the trip by the Chinese team signaled in terms of Kim’s health. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2020, 11:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/70 "2020-04-24T23:43:04Z")
Pretty is as pretty does, dontcha know. ---
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2020, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/71 "2020-04-24T23:44:06Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > [Kim Jong Un - Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Jong-un) > > If you scroll on down you can see how his name is spelled in the Korean script. When I learned Han-gul, the Korean script I found that they use sounds we do not, and vice versa. The right hand letter in the middle syllable is, I think, more clesely pronounced as a flat “0” sound, but it’s been a long time and I suppose, depending on how the letter is pronounced, it could be “u”, as in “uh”, not oo\> > > Korean does not use an “f” sound for example so when an English word with that sound is transliterated into Hangul, you can’t spell it just right. Fanta Cola comes out more like Banta. I saw the bottole when I was stationed in South Korea. The English “R” has no duplicate in Hangul. The letter used that is closest to it in English is a sound we don’t use. So Lee, Li, Ri, or Rhee, are all equally wrong spellings of one of the most common Korean surnames. I understand the vagaries of transliteration, but this is a situation in which there seems to be a standard spelling in English, unlike, say, for Moammar Ghaddafi. Why the on-the-fly notation? ---
**Author:** ![QuickSilver](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/quicksilver/32/7832_2.png) [@QuickSilver](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/QuickSilver)\ **Post date:** [April 24, 2020, 11:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/72 "2020-04-24T23:48:54Z")
> [@elbows](#): > > I just read he’s dead! > (Vice director HongKongSateliteTV) Do not toy with our emotions. ---
**Author:** ![Baker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/bb73d2/32.png) [@Baker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baker)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2020, 12:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/73 "2020-04-25T00:52:56Z")
[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/SjKB3BQlgks/maxresdefault.jpg "Kim Jong-un Family Tree") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SjKB3BQlgks) I’ve seen this guy’s videos on family trees before. It’s interesting to watch. The Dear Leader does have, it is said, a young daughter, maybe family members will fight it out for a regency of sorts. But young kids don’t usually survive a long regency. Princes in the Tower, anyone? ---
**Author:** ![Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/7cd45c/32.png) [@Elendil\_s\_Heir](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elendil_s_Heir)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2020, 4:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/74 "2020-04-25T04:43:32Z")
It couldn’t have happened to a chubbier murderous tyrant. ---
**Author:** ![galen\_ubal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/galen_ubal/32/4440_2.png) [@galen\_ubal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/galen_ubal)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2020, 5:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/75 "2020-04-25T05:17:54Z")
I’m starting to see reports across the Twitterverse that Kim Jong-un has indeed died. ‘US intel sources’ sort of things, and not on anything official. ---
**Author:** ![Seanette](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/seanette/32/9139_2.png) [@Seanette](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Seanette)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2020, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/76 "2020-04-25T06:39:42Z")
Googling, it looks like those reports are coming from Hong Kong Satellite Television. I have no clue how reliable they may or may not be. ---
**Author:** ![dalej42](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/67e7ee/32.png) [@dalej42](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dalej42)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2020, 6:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/77 "2020-04-25T06:54:24Z")
North Korean television is broadcasting today which isn’t normal. > **[KOREA CENTRAL TV (LIVESTREAM) | KCNA Watch](https://kcnawatch.org/korea-central-tv-livestream/)** > > Watch Korea Central TV live from Pyongyang using the below player. This service, which is for the purpose of research and private study, is provided free of charge. Schedule Information: News broadcasts take place at 5.00pm, 8pm and 10.30pm daily TV... It is Army Day, a holiday. So far, nothing that looks like a death report ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2020, 6:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/78 "2020-04-25T06:59:15Z")
> [@dalej42](#): > > North Korean television is broadcasting today which isn’t normal. > [KOREA CENTRAL TV (LIVESTREAM) | KCNA Watch](https://kcnawatch.org/korea-central-tv-livestream/) > > It is Army Day, a holiday. So far, nothing that looks like a death report Maybe they’ll shoot him out of a cannon. ---
**Author:** ![jasonlee3071](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/5fc32e/32.png) [@jasonlee3071](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jasonlee3071)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2020, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/79 "2020-04-25T07:52:46Z")
Well if he is suffering from something I’m sure the rest of the world isn’t going to really care or be sympathetic. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [April 25, 2020, 3:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241/80 "2020-04-25T15:34:52Z")
Some second-tier newspapers are reporting “the Japanese media” says he is in a vegetative state.\* Still far from official. \*For Kim, I’m guessing a cabbage. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/kim-jung-un-in-very-serious-condition/852241.md?page=5)