Published: September 19, 2008
Many South Koreans fear that Kim's death or incapacitation could precipitate a fierce power struggle in the nuclear-armed country, and perhaps a flood of refugees, that would be felt along the 250-kilometer-long DMZ. Despite its name, this is the world's most heavily armed frontier, carpeted with land mines and guarded by nearly two million troops ready to resume, at a moment's notice, a war that was suspended in 1953, but never officially concluded with a peace treaty.
So far, North Korea has shown no signs of unrest and - if Kim is indeed gravely ill - has been doing its best to demonstrate that it is business as usual inside the world's most secretive regime, officials and analysts in Seoul said.
In the past week, North Korea's state-run media have reported that Kim was executing his normal business, sending letters to foreign leaders and wreaths of flowers to the North's national cemeteries. But they did not show Kim.
"It's all nonsense spread by bad people who wish ill for our country," Hyon Hak Bong, a North Korean diplomat, told South Korean reporters at the border village of Panmunjom on Friday, condemning the news reports.
Reports about Kim's health have surged since he failed to show up at the parade on Sept. 9 marking the 60th anniversary of the North's founding.
Publicly, the South Korean government has said only that it has intelligence reports that Kim had a stroke but is recovering and that his grip on power remains unchallenged.
Kim, 66, took over after his father's death in the first hereditary transfer of power in the Communist world. He does not appear to have groomed any of his three sons as an heir.
His control has been so pervasive and the country's isolation so deep that no outside observers can say for sure who is in and out of favor in Kim's inner circles. The lack of information provides fertile ground for speculation about Kim's condition and its ramifications. News reports citing unnamed sources - or no sources at all, or quoting analysts' conjectures - proliferate, especially in South Korea and Japan.
"What makes the situation more confusing is that commentators' and sources' conjectures are colored by their political and ideological agendas," said Paik Hak Soon, a senior North Korea observer at the independent Sejong Institute near Seoul.
Depending on the Seoul newspaper, Kim's condition varies from "four limbs paralyzed" to "spasms after brain surgery" to "able to brush his own teeth."
Lee Cheol Woo, a governing party lawmaker who was briefed by the government's spy agency, said Kim "can speak and stand if assisted."
Japan's Mainichi newspaper, quoting an unnamed Chinese source, reported this week that Kim began losing consciousness at work in April and could not properly govern. Toshimitsu Shigemura, a professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, recently insisted that Kim died in 2003 and that what the world has seen since have been his body doubles.
As for the cause of Kim's stroke, reports have cited his gourmet tastes and his habit of working late nights. Some South Korean newspapers have ventured that Kim collapsed after his youngest son, Kim Jong Un, was injured in a car accident.
These reports say Kim favors Jong Un, 25, because he "looks and talks like his father," although no picture of him has been available.
Many officials and analysts in Seoul predict that if Kim dies suddenly, the North's military and party elite are most likely to form a collective leadership.
Others say that if he survives long enough, he will eventually try to turn power over to one of his sons.
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