Wll, it’s certainly a good thing that there’s no Covid 19 in North Korea:rolleyes:, or I might be worried that he either had it or was at risk.
You misspelled “prolonged.”
Wasn’t there a poster here who thought that Kim Jung-Il" meant “Kim Jung the 2nd”?
I’m impressed that he had surgery at all. Surgery requires sedation. Sedation requires trust that the procedure will be done correctly… and trust that you won’t just be killed & replaced. I would imagine trust on that level must be terribly difficult for a dictator.
I rushed to print.
Here’s my guess what happened: Dear Leader got a splinter in his finger. The country’s best surgeon was rushed in with a pair of tweezers. He removed it successfully. Now NK’s media can say that Kim recovered from a near-certain fatal condition thanks to his awesome healing powers!
I was born on April 14th, and learned early that the Titanic hit the iceberg on my birthday, and that Abraham Lincoln was shot.
Is there anyone anywhere near the line of succession who’s suspected of any degree of sanity? Or at least insanity of an internationally-acceptable sort?
There is the sister who switched pens on him when he and Trump were signing their BFF document. The CIA may have put curare on it.
I am not convinced that Kim Jung Un is particularly insane. His behaviors could be seen as pretty rational given the unique environment he was born into. A fair amount of cutthroat attitude is necessary in a family competing for succession. Fail in the wrong way and it can be deadly. Winning that succession fight also has a big upside. Once in power the risks are still great if you lose a tight grip on power. Acting in a way that the rest of the world considers crazy looks an awful lot like the sane choice for someone born into the Kim family.
The problem is that it is an internationally unacceptable sort of sanity.
South Korea’s saying they doubt the reports are true.
China seems to be being noncommittal (same article.)
My birthdate had Krystalnacht and the fall of the Berlin Wall, which I thought were nice 20th century bookends.
I suppose all we can do now is wait and hope.
I read that as "acute, brief and *anal *
Kim is Chump’s wet dream. I wonder if he will declare a period of mourning.
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.
Yep, but if your choices are 1) surgery without anesthesia, 2) surgery with anesthesia, or 3) let the health condition (whatever it is) worsen until it kills you, you’ll take your chances with Door 2#.
Jong-chul is described in Wikipedia as “does not involve himself in politics, leading a quiet life in Pyongyang where he plays guitar in a band.” Doesn’t sound like someone with the ambition or cunning to be a head of state.
I thought this for many years, until I was corrected.
Might be somebody with the ambition and cunning to stay alive.
IIRC, Bashar al-Assad was in England practicing medicine when he was tapped to take over the family business of dictatorship. I’d say he’s adapted well.