Video renews speculation N. Korea leader is ill

updated 2:31 p.m. ET July 6, 2007

SEOUL, South Korea - How ill is Kim Jong Il?

Talk of the reclusive North Korean leader’s health emerged again this week when he made a rare public appearance looking a bit thinner and sporting less hair.

It was the first public view of the secretive Kim since late April, when he reviewed a military parade from a balcony over Pyongyang’s main plaza, clapping and waving to his soldiers as they hysterically shouted cheers, appearing deeply moved by the rare glimpse of Kim.

This week, Chinese television broadcast video of Kim meeting with Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi in Pyongyang on Tuesday.

The 65-year-old leader — revered as a near-demigod in his totalitarian nation — brandished a big smile and looked generally well. But he also appeared to have lost some weight and hair, and South Korean news media revived speculation that he might be in poor health.

Kim’s condition is of international interest because he tightly rules isolated, nuclear-armed North Korea, which is participating in a six-nation forum shepherding Pyongyang toward giving up its atomic weapons.

The new view of the leader came after unconfirmed news reports that Kim underwent some kind of medical procedure involving his heart in May, performed by doctors flown in from Germany. He was said to be so weak he could not walk more than 30 yards without resting.

'Markedly leaner'
In response to questions last month, the German Heart Institute Berlin said it had sent a team of doctors to North Korea to perform operations there — but not on Kim Jong Il.

Still, one of South Korea’s three largest newspapers, Dong-a Ilbo, speculated this week after the video of Kim that the reported medical procedure might have made Kim “markedly leaner” and caused him to lose hair, saying such symptoms are common after heart surgery.

Kim Won-jang, a cardiologist at Seoul’s Asan Medical Center, said some patients can lose appetite and thus weight after a heart operation, but not all do.

Nobody but North Korea can give a definite answer about Kim’s health conditions. But the regime, which is one of the world’s most closed and tolerates no independent press, has never commented on Kim’s health — an absolute taboo in the communist country.

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