SEOUL, South Korea: North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is believed to be recovering from recent surgery, South Korea’s spy agency said yesterday as the communist nation rejected reports questioning Kim’s health as a “conspiracy plot.”
Speculation that Kim may have taken ill had intensified after he missed a parade on Tuesday commemorating the communist state’s founding 60 years ago.
Yesterday, South Korea’s National Intelligence Service (NIS) reported to a parliamentary committee that it had obtained intelligence reports showing Kim recently had surgery for an unspecified circulatory problem and his condition had much improved, an agency official said.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, citing lawmakers briefed by the spy agency, reported that the 66-year-old Kim suffered a cerebral hemorrhage, but he remains conscious and “is able to control the situation.”
The NIS also reported to lawmakers that Kim is in a “recoverable and manageable condition,” and that the North is not in a “power vacuum,” Yonhap said.
NIS officials said they could not confirm the Yonhap report.
