Kim Jong Un: Why Do Rumours About His Death Keep Coming Back?

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un appeared in state-run photos looking healthy, just hours after a Chinese dissident claimed he had died. The dissident, who lives in the United States, said Kim had fallen into a coma and been taken to a hospital in Beijing. He also claimed that Kim later died and that his body was secretly returned to North Korea. North Korean state media quickly published pictures of Kim touring a clothing and shoe exhibition with his daughter, casting serious doubt on the story.

The man who started the rumour is named Wanjun Xie. He calls himself the chairman of the Chinese Democratic Party, a group that is banned in China. Xie has made unverified claims before, including suggestions that Chinese leader Xi Jinping had also died. Experts who study North Korea say Xie provided no evidence to support his story about Kim.

For people who follow North Korea closely, this kind of rumour has become almost normal. North Korea is one of the most secretive countries in the world, making it very hard to find out what is really happening there. That secrecy makes it easy for false stories to spread and hard for anyone to quickly prove them wrong.

There are several reasons to doubt the claim that Kim died. South Korean intelligence officials said they had heard nothing to back it up. Experts also pointed out that if Kim's health had suddenly collapsed, there would likely be signs outside North Korea's borders — such as China tightening security along its border or increased activity around North Korean embassies. None of that happened.

This is not the first time a rumour about Kim's death has turned out to be wrong. In 2020, a well-known North Korean defector said he was '99% certain' Kim had died after heart surgery. Not long after, Kim appeared in public and the story fell apart. False alarms like this have come up more than once over the years.

One big reason these rumours keep coming up is uncertainty about who would lead North Korea if Kim were gone. North Korea has been run by the Kim family for three generations. Kim Jong Un's grandfather spent many years carefully preparing his son to take over, so the change in leadership in 1994 went fairly smoothly. Kim Jong Un's own rise to power was faster and less certain.

Today, South Korea's intelligence agency thinks Kim may be preparing his daughter to take over one day. She has appeared more and more at important events and military displays in recent years. However, she is believed to be only about 13 years old, North Korea has never had a female leader, and she has not been officially named as his successor.

The second reason these rumours feel believable to some people is that Kim does have real health risks. He is overweight and a heavy smoker, and South Korea's intelligence service has warned that his lifestyle puts him at higher risk of heart disease. Heart problems and strokes have also affected other members of the Kim family before him.

The stakes are very high if anything were to happen to Kim. A sudden leadership crisis would raise hard questions about who controls North Korea's nuclear weapons and could cause instability across the region. Countries like China, South Korea, and the United States — which keeps about 28,000 troops in South Korea — all watch North Korea very closely for exactly this reason.

Because it is so hard to get reliable information out of North Korea, the country is an easy target for false reports. Only a very small group of people ever gets close to Kim, and even professional spy agencies struggle to confirm what is really happening. The North Korean government is also suspected of deliberately spreading misleading information to confuse the outside world, making it very unlikely that Wanjun Xie had uncovered a secret that trained intelligence agencies had completely missed.