New reports have surfaced suggesting North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un has fallen into a coma, despite similar reports being laid to rest earlier this year.
North Korea expert Dr Leonid Petrov told Sky News the most recent reports were sparked by Jang Sung-min, a former aid to the former South Korean president, and it remained unclear why he made the suggestion after Kim Jong-Un made a number of appearances in June and July.
Mr Petrov said the dictator’s younger sister had also disappeared from the public eye.
“Some people suspect that maybe she is ill with coronavirus but in North Korea leadership people come and go, disappear and reappear, its normal process in a dictatorial state,” he said.
“Coronavirus rules the world and even dictators are powerless in the face of this menace.”
North Korea claimed on numerous occasions that the nation did not have a single case of the virus in the midst of the worldwide pandemic.
“But the fact that Kim Jong-Un disappeared from public view in the middle of April during the festivities, celebrations dedicated to his late grandfather Kim Il-Sung makes us all suspicious about this rosy-state of affair in the hermit kingdom,” Mr Petrov said.
“So maybe Kim Jong-Un was hiding from people who might have been suspected of contracting coronavirus.
“So coronavirus gives certain background to the story but we really don’t know whether we should blame coronavirus for the strange things which happen in North Korea these days.”
