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North Korean leader Kim Jong-un at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory, in North Pyongan Province, on May 1. (Yonhap News)

North Korean leader Kim Jong-un’s attendance at the ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory, in North Pyongan Province, on May 1, showed that he’s alive and well, squashing rumors that had been circulating wildly about Kim being in critical condition or even dead.

On May 2, North Korea’s state-run media ran images and video footage of Kim at the previous day’s event. The leader can be seen cutting the ribbon, walking at an energetic pace, clapping, leisurely waving his hand, and giving instructions to people around him. The images released of Kim going about his daily business without any inconvenience proves that he doesn’t have any serious health problems. After Kim’s public appearance, US President Donald Trump sent him a note of welcome on Twitter: “I, for one, am glad to see he is back, and well!”

The torrential flood of speculative reports and “fake news” about Kim’s health over the past 20 days was brought to an anticlimactic close by the North Korean news coverage on Saturday. This could provide an opportunity to raise fundamental questions about the trustworthiness of intelligence found in reports based on anonymous sources in the North.

Information about Kim’s health is obviously sensitive given the current chill in inter-Korean relations, and the glib approach to covering that information seen over the past weeks only magnifies confusion, which is unlikely to be helpful for maintaining stability on the Korean Peninsula or developing inter-Korean relations.

The rumors that Kim had health problems arose after he failed to pay his respects at the Kumsusan Palace of the Sun on the birth anniversary of his grandfather Kim Il-sung, on Apr. 15. The first report was printed on Apr. 20 by conservative South Korean news website the Daily NK, which said that Kim Jong-un had undergone a cardiovascular procedure at Hyangsan Hospital, in North Pyongan Province, on Apr. 12, and was staying at Hyangsan Villa, citing a source in North Korea.

That report didn’t make much of an impression until the next day, when CNN published a story titled “US monitoring intelligence that North Korean leader is in grave danger after surgery.” Soon the story was receiving major attention, not only from the South Korean press but also international media outlets such as Reuters and Bloomberg.

Kim takes a tour of the Sunchon Phosphatic Fertilizer Factory, in North Pyongan Province, on May 1. (Yonhap News)

The Blue House publicly denied the reports about Kim’s health problems, explaining that it hadn’t detected anything unusual going on inside North Korea, while Trump himself said that the CNN report was inaccurate. But that wasn’t enough to put out the fire. YouTube and other websites were quickly filled with various rumors about Kim’s health, not only that he was in critical condition, but that he was unconscious or even dead. A number of South Korean conservative media outlets played up the rumors, speculating about who might succeed Kim, assuming that he was dead.

During this process, Yun Sang-hyeon, an independent lawmaker and chair of the National Assembly’s Foreign Affairs and Unification Committee, fanned the flames of the rumors by calling a press conference on Apr. 21 and saying that Kim appeared to have undergone a cardiovascular procedure. Thae Yong-ho, a former senior diplomat at North Korea’s embassy to the UK and a recently elected lawmaker with the United Future Party (UFP), joined in: “One thing is clear [. . . Kim Jong-un] cannot stand up by himself or walk properly.” Ji Seong-ho, a defector and another newly minted UFP lawmaker, confidently stated last weekend that there was a 99% chance that Kim Jong-un had died, without offering any evidence to back up that claim.

South Korea’s conservative press and North Korean defectors have raised doubts about Kim’s health on several previous occasions. What was unique about this particular case was that the spark was lit by the foreign press. Once the fire was burning, South Korea’s conservative newspapers and politicians ramped up their coverage and defectors jumped in to treat the rumors like established facts.

“This is bound to raise suspicions that people were producing and distributing fake news for political reasons, taking advantage of the difficulty of confirming information about a place as secretive as North Korea,” said Yang Moo-jin, professor at the University of North Korean Studies.

By Park Byong-su, senior staff writer, and Lee Jung-ae, staff reporter

Please direct comments or questions to [english@hani.co.kr]