Daily US Times: North Korea has aired unprecedented television footage of one of its citizens expressing concern for the country’s supreme leader Kim Jong-un’s sudden weight loss.
Mr Kim’s health is usually off-limits in a country where his image is firmly controlled by state media.
North Korea’s main television channel has also shown footage of Mr Kim looking thinner than in recent years.
There have been persistent rumours about Kim Jong-un’S health in the decade he has been in power, but they have rarely been acknowledged by the country’s notoriously secretive government.
Two recent clips shown on Korea Central Television, the country’s main TV channel, have supposedly caused concern about the Supreme Leader’s health.
One clip showed Kim arriving for a concert showing a dramatic weight loss.
The second clip- and most unusual one – was of an unnamed citizen of Pyongyang who told Central TV on Friday’s main news: “Seeing [Mr Kim] become emaciated like that, we all became so sad.
He said: “Everyone just started to cry.”
Earlier photographs and footage from Workers Party meetings this month hinted that Mr Kim was losing weight.
Analysis by the NK News website showed that the strap on Kim’s expensive designer watch was fastened tighter than at earlier events, suggesting that he was losing weight.
Kwak Gil Seob, who heads One Korea Center, a website specializing in affairs in North Korea, said that the Pyongyang regime “would never allow negative news around Kim Jong-un to be published” – meaning that the footage was aired “to show that Kim Jong-un is losing weight by himself”.
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