The great, all-powerful, all-knowing, son-of-god, infallible dictator could not withstand a cardiac surgery? What an incompetent moron. My 80-year old uncle survived just fine.
I think his sister did it. She reduced her fat-ass brother to a carrot, and he’s getting less plump by the day, I assume, unless he has been bumped off already and his organs harvested. What an ignominious end for a man who executed his opponents with anti-aircraft guns!
On the positive side, we now get to see his sister, who is a lot easier on the eyes than her fat weirdo brother.
It will be interesting to see what sort of feminine tantrums she will throw across the Korean peninsula.
I was just thinking this. My generation grew up with Chevy Chase on Weekend Update on “Saturday Night Live,” saying… repeatedly… “This just in: Generalissimo Francisco Franco is still dead.”
…because the poor bugger lingered for what seemed like forever before they were willing to admit he wasn’t coming back, short of bolts in his neck and a lightning bolt… and for what seemed like FOREVER, the news would report that he wasn’t QUITE dead…
Interesting theory. We’ve all seen this asshole in photos with his note taking butt kissers at missile launches. It would be sweet justice if a missile exploded close to his viewing stand.
Note that Kim missed the April 15 Day of the Sun celebration. The day after this missile test. Kim also missed the celebrations to mark the founding of the Korean People’s Army. Public appearances he’s never missed before.
Maybe Fox has the story right this time? Let’s see if other news agencies run with this story.
I’ve been having this idea - one I’m not taking terribly seriously.
South Korea has all along said that no, he’s fine. Maybe they know that because he’s in South Korea, for some reason. Negotiations? Defection?
Me talking completely out of my arse?
NPR, one of the most cautious and objective news outlets, has had nothing on this until today, when it ran this radio story (links to 2:44 audio). The gist of their story is that these are all rumors because no-one knows anything.
Reuters, another very well-respected source, only has a story about Trump’s remarks about how he doesn’t believe that Kim is very ill.
So this is all 100% speculation at this point, based on his absence from a very important state occasion.
Marshal Nedellin’s experience notwithstanding, it’s not usual for VIPs to observe a rocket launch from a point where it’s possible they can be barbecued. Especially with some of the nasty storable liquids a lot of their big stuff uses in the first stages.
But see…they’re evidently planning some sort of mobile missile launch from Sondok Airport in NK, per a bunch of satellite imagery. This twitter timeline has a lot of the links and photos and wonks who’ve come up with that as a possible interpretation: https://mobile.twitter.com/Rover829/status/1254002543845273602
A true mobile ICBM would be a game changer for them. As it is, assuming they’ve an ICBM vehicle and assuming they have a nuclear warhead sufficiently robust and accurate enough to ride the thing, it still is either based at a fixed location, or if it is mobile, it can’t be moved while fueled. Fuelling them takes time.
If the new system were a mobile, solid rocket fueled system—like Russia’s Topol M-–they could be shuttled all over the country, making tracking them and killing them on the ground really, really hard. A Operation Frigate Bird proof-of-concept multistage test against some island or chunk of ocean in the South Pacific space graveyard, would be one hell of a coming out party for Un’s sis. Like they care about the above ground test moratorium… What are we going to do about it? Put them on double secret sanctions?
Or, it could be just another flurry of the same kind of short range surface to surface missiles that they’ve fired off when they feel the West isn’t paying enough attention to them. The wilder and wilder theories about what’s going on with Un is pretty funny. Frankly, they need to start getting more lucid and humiliating, if the idea is to goad the North into issuing some proof of life or show the new successor.
I’ve wondered if it’s to cover for some furious negotiations with whoever is going to run things post-Un? Like the plot of The Death of Stalin, but this time, in Korean. I find it difficult to imagine a bunch of old Korean men—those that are left in the Guidance Board after Un’s various baroque ways of killing some of them. Anyway, those guys deciding to follow his sister, no matter how insanely ruthless and cruel she’s been. But if she can’t do it, who will?
It’d be amazing—and it won’t happen—if the result was a couple dozen of North Korean old men becoming wealthy landowners in California, and the South being welcomed with open arms and hungry faces to reunite with the North.
Both sides have been pursuing reunification, they each even have committees and departments so named!
Is it possible that anyone stepping up to fill the void is entering such an intrigue rich, and potentially deadly dangerous game, that no one really wants the job?
Maybe reunification is the easier path, as fraught as it must surely be. And maybe if it’s to have any chance, they have to keep this quiet and ‘set the table’, for what they’re going to attempt?
Serious question: if there’s so much speculation about Kim outside North Korea because he’s been MIA and missed an important state occasion, wouldn’t there be (quiet, clandestine) speculation among the people of North Korea? If so, why wouldn’t the NK government make a big show of Kim being hale and hearty (whether he is or not)?
The Death of Stalin, while amusing, was not a documentary. The other members of the Central Committee did not execute Beria and burn his body personally. That took place some months after his arrest and trial.
I already spilled the beans somewhere nearby: He’s being cloned, that he may bless his people for decades or centuries to come. All hail DPRK advanced biomedical science! Go on, start hailing. Now. If you value your family. What’s plata o plomo in Korean? (I looked it up: 은 또는 납 - eun ttoneun nab.)
