A South Korean lawmaker says the country's intelligence service has
testified that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is recovering from a stroke.
North Korean officials say Kim Jong Il is just fine, and reject a proliferation
of media reports that have questioned his health. As VOA's Kurt Achin reports
from Seoul, no other nation depends so heavily on one single
individual.
South Korean lawmaker Won Hye-young told
reporters Wednesday the country's intelligence service believes Kim Jong Il has
suffered a stroke - but that he should be able to recover.
Won attended a
closed parliament session at which he said intelligence officials testified Kim
Jong Il cannot walk, but remains conscious. That account sharply contradicts
North Korean assessments of his condition.
The Japanese news agency Kyodo
quotes North Korea's second highest-ranking leader, Kim Yong-nam, as saying
"nothing is wrong" with Kim Jong Il. A senior North Korean diplomat rejects
recent reports about his health as "worthless" and part of a "conspiracy
plot."
Sixty-six-year-old Kim Jong Il holds absolute power in North
Korea's authoritarian government. He is believed to have some health issues,
including diabetes. However, rumors of a more serious illness surfaced Tuesday,
when he failed to appear at a military parade to mark the 60th anniversary of
North Korea's founding. That followed weeks of absence from public
view.
Unification Minister Kim Ha-joong told a parliament hearing the
government is on "high alert." A spokesman for the South Korean President Lee
Myung-bak says he has been meeting with
top officials to discuss preparations
for any possible emergency.
Analysts say it is difficult to overstate Kim
Jong Il's personal importance to North Korea's political cohesion. He is heir to
a religion-like cult of personality the state built around his father, Kim Il
Sung, the country's first president. He is also seen as the only individual who
can rise above factions who might otherwise jostle with each other for
power.
Human rights advocates say Kim Jong Il is also the lynchpin of a
system that relies on terror to ensure public order. His absence could make it
more difficult to manage millions of impoverished North Koreans who have endured
near-starvation conditions for nearly two decades.
A North Korean
collapse would create a security nightmare for the country's nearest neighbors,
China and South Korea. Leaders there fear a tidal wave of refugees. South Korea
could possibly find itself having to pay for hundreds of billions of dollars in
emergency infrastructure
and social welfare costs for the decayed North.
Getting control of North Korea's nuclear weapons and missile arsenal would be a
chief concern for Washington.
Kim Jong Il was openly groomed by his
father for several decades, but has not publicly designated any successor for
himself. Kim Yong-hyeon - a North Korea specialist at Seoul's Donguk University
- says it is unlikely a family member will take over in Pyongyang.
He
says the most likely successor to Kim Jong Il would come from top
brass of
the military, the strongest of North Korea's organizations.
Those details
- like the health prognosis of the North Korean leader -
remain, for now, a
matter of speculation and guesswork.