Kim Jong Un is in hospital

The argument

Unlike some theories suggest, Kim Jong-Un is not dead but he’s not at some tropical resort, either. Rather, doctors are currently fighting for his life at a hospital in Japan. According to weekly general-issue magazine Shukan Gendai , the North Korean dictator fell into a coma due to heart surgery-related complications . After clutching his heart and passing out on a day trip to the Chinese countryside, an accompanying doctor performed CPR and rushed him to the hospital . There, it was discovered that he had been putting off a stent procedure, a minimally-invasive surgery that involves the insertion of tubes to unblock clogged arteries . Why Jong-Un would delay such a simple procedure is unknown, but the delay caused serious health problems. The leader’s critical health condition was covered up by the North Korean media, as they feared destabilizing the political environment he had spent so long creating or allowing other world powers to attack when the country was the most vulnerable. Thus, Jong-Un has vanished from the eye of the news-at least until he makes a full recovery.

Context

Supreme Leader of North Korea Kim Jong-Un has seemingly disappeared yet again, this time for several weeks. In the world media, conflicting theories about his whereabouts have emerged.

Premises

Counter-arguments

There is little evidence to support this theory, as opposed to other theories that rely on pictures, transcripts, interviews, and satellite images. This theory relies entirely on hearsay from a single magazine, making its reliability questionable at best.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] A single weekly magazine report, in a genre that trades in unverifiable claims about North Korea, is thin sourcing for a claim of this magnitude — the counter's point. Reporting on that country's leadership is notoriously unreliable, and several confident earlier accounts of the deaths or disgrace of senior figures were contradicted by their subsequent reappearance. [Rejecting P2] The account is internally implausible. A North Korean leader collapsing in China and being taken to a hospital in Japan would require transit between three states, two of which have no diplomatic relations with his own, and would be among the most closely watched movements in the region. No government, airline, border or hospital record of any such journey emerged. [Rejecting P3] The cover-up premise is unfalsifiable as posed, since the absence of evidence is treated as confirmation of it. The account was in any case overtaken by events: Kim appeared publicly at the opening of a fertiliser plant in May 2020, within weeks of the reports, and has been seen and photographed regularly since.