Kim Jong-un’s disappearance from public life following alleged heart surgery has led to reports the North Korean leader has died. With half an eye on who would be called upon to succeed him, as there is very little known about his kids he kept so secret.
Who are Kim Jong-un’s mysterious three children North Korea has kept largely secret?
Mystery surrounds Kim Jong-un’s three children amid wildly varying and unverified reports that the North Korean leader is gravely ill or may have died.
The latest theory to explain Kim’s sudden disappearance from public life suggests one of his body guards had been suspected of contracting the coronavirus.
It has been claimed by multiple news outlets that the controversial leader is desperately unwell having undergone heart surgery.
Some officials or sources now claim the dictator is dead, others say he is in a vegetative state or coma, but on Sunday it was said that he is “alive and well”.
Kim Jong-un’s gut-busting ‘luxury’ diet that saw him balloon to 20 stone
The only thing that is certain is no-one knows for sure what is happening inside North Korea.
And similar mystery enshrouds Kim’s family should one of his children be called upon to succeed their father.
His wife Ri Sol-Ju is widely reported to have had three children since they married in 2009 – with the first born understood to be a boy born the following year.
The child’s name is unknown, while a possible sister, likely born in 2013, is equally guarded and the gender of the couple’s final reported child, reportedly born in February 2017, is entirely unknown.
Former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo claimed Kim once told him during a summit in Singapore he did not want his children “to carry the nuclear weapon on their back their whole life”.
The leader has otherwise refrained from discussing his offspring in public.
But he often poses for publicity photos with other people’s children
The assumed birth dates of the second two children have been largely built around Ri’s disappearances from public life for much of 2016, as well as previously in 2012.
Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong was promoted to the head of the propaganda department of the Worker’s Party of Korea in October 2017, with some suggestion she could succeed her brother should he die.
However, any claims about Kim or the country’s activities are almost impossible to verify given Pyongyang’s secrecy and isolation from the rest of the world.
Speculation erupted after Kim missed an annual birthday celebration for his late grandfather – Kim Il-sung, the country’s founder – on April 15.
And since there, there have been so many other speculations.
