North Korean leader reappears in public after 40-day absence, but why the cane?

SEOUL, South Korea – After vanishing from the public eye for nearly six weeks, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is back, ending rumours that he was gravely ill, deposed or worse.

Now, a new, albeit smaller, mystery has emerged: Why the cane?

Kim, who was last seen publicly at a Sept. 3 concert, appeared in images released by state media Tuesday smiling broadly and supporting himself with a walking stick while touring the newly built Wisong Scientists Residential District and another new institute in Pyongyang, part of his regular “field guidance” tours. The North didn’t say when the visit happened, nor did it address the leader’s health.

Kim’s appearance allowed the country’s massive propaganda apparatus to continue doing what it does best — glorify the third generation of Kim family rule. And it will tamp down, at least for the moment, rampant rumours of a coup and serious health problems.

Before Tuesday, Kim missed several high-profile events that he normally attends and was described in an official documentary last month as experiencing “discomfort.”

Archive footage from August showed him overweight and limping, prompting the South Korean media to speculate he had undergone surgery on his ankles. Some experts thought he was suffering from gout or diabetes.

In Washington, State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki said the U.S. didn’t have any reason to doubt the authenticity of the latest images, although she added that because of the opacity of the North Korean regime, there’s always a question about the reliability of publicly available information.

A South Korean analyst said Kim probably broke his media silence to dispel outside speculation that he wasn’t in control and to win sympathy from a domestic audience by creating the image of a leader who works through pain.

The appearance may be a form of “emotional politics meant to appeal to the North Korean people’s sympathy,” said Cheong Seong-chang, at the private Sejong Institute in South Korea.

Kim’s father, Kim Jong Il, who reportedly suffered a stroke in 2008 before dying of a heart attack in late 2011, was seen limping but never with a walking stick, said Lim Byeong Cheol, a spokesman from Seoul’s Unification Ministry. Kim Jong Un’s grandfather, Kim Il Sung, occasionally used a cane when he got too old to walk steep roads, according to another ministry official, who did not want to be named citing office rules.

Cheong said Kim appeared in the recently released images to have lost about 10 kilograms (22 pounds) compared to pictures from May. He speculated that since Kim was holding a cane on his left side he may have had surgery on his left ankle.

Kim “appears to want to show people that he’s doing fine, though he’s indeed still having some discomfort. If he hadn’t done so, excessive speculation would have continued to flare up and anxiety among North Korean residents would have grown and calls by outsiders for contingency plans on dealing with North Korea would have gotten momentum,” Cheong said.

The South Korean government has all along seen no signals of any major problems.

In deciding to resume his public activity before fully recovering from his condition, Kim was looking to quickly quell rumours that his health problems were serious enough to threaten his status as North Korean leader, said Lim, the government spokesman.

“The cane aside, he looked to be in good health,” Lim said.

The recent absence was, in part, “probably an attention-getting device — and it certainly works,” Bruce Cumings, an expert on Korea at the University of Chicago, said in an email.

“The North has been on a diplomatic offensive in Europe and elsewhere, it feels isolated — and is, if we’re talking about relations with Washington,” he wrote. “All this puts them back on the front page.”

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Associated Press writers Hyung-jin Kim and Kim Tong-hyung in Seoul and Matthew Pennington in Washington contributed to this report.