SEOUL: When North Korea broke a three-week silence on leader Kim Jong Un’s public activity on Saturday, it offered no clue where he had been during a period of intense global speculation about his health and whereabouts, or why he was hidden from the public for so long.
Instead, state media simply showed him surrounded by aides and appearing confident at a gleaming fertilizer factory that is believed by outside experts to be part of a secret nuclear-weapons program.
While much remains a mystery about Kim’s condition, the abrupt re-emergence of the relaxed and smiling leader was clear choreography of key messages from the secretive government.
