North Korea publishes Kim Jong Un photos amid unsupported death claim

North Korean state media published photographs on Tuesday showing Kim Jong Un at a clothing and footwear exhibition with his daughter. They said the visit took place in Pyongyang on Monday, as an unsupported claim that the North Korean leader had died spread online. The publication offers a sharply different account, though the BBC says it cannot establish exactly when the pictures were taken. [1] [2]

Wanjun Xie, a Chinese dissident based in the United States, claimed in a Monday post that Kim had suffered a severe brain haemorrhage, been taken to a hospital in Beijing and died. He also alleged that Kim’s body had been secretly returned to North Korea. Xie provided no evidence for the claims, according to South Korea’s Yonhap news agency. NK News reported that rumours had begun circulating from at least two social media accounts between Sunday and Monday before reaching tabloids. [2] [3]

South Korean diplomatic and security officials told Yonhap they had heard “nothing” to support the claims. North Korean state media did not directly address them. The exhibition photographs come from those state outlets, rather than from independent witnesses, and their release does not establish whether the outlets were responding to the rumour. [2]

Kim’s health attracts intense scrutiny because information about North Korea’s leadership is tightly controlled and his succession remains uncertain. A similar claim that he had died in 2020 unravelled after he appeared in public, the BBC reports. This time, too, the death claim has no substantiation; the photographs do not settle the separate question of when Kim was pictured. [1]