N. Korea Releases New Photos of Kim

Speculation About His Health Persists

TOKYO, Nov. 3 -- North Korean leader Kim Jong Il is very much alive, smiling and enjoying a soccer game -- in undated photographs his state-run media released over the weekend.

Kim sports his signature bouffant curls in the photos, suggesting that he did not have the brain surgery he was widely rumored to have undergone to repair damage from a stroke he may or may not have suffered in August.

The Korean Central News Agency's photographs of the apparently happy Kim, also known in North Korea as the Dear Leader, were in sharp focus, but they did little to clarify the state of his health.

As usual with regard to the sealed Stalinist North, all is speculation.

"I don't think it is appropriate for us to say whether these pictures are real or fake or dated," Kim Ho-nyoun, a spokesman for South Korea's Unification Ministry, told reporters in Seoul on Monday. "As far as we can discern, there have been no particular changes in the power structure of the North Korean government."

The images released Sunday were the second batch of supposedly recent photos to be made public by the North Korean news agency since Kim reportedly suffered a cerebral hemorrhage in mid-August. Those reports came from the chief of South Korea's National Intelligence Service and from unnamed U.S. intelligence sources.

South Korea's intelligence chief, Kim Sung-ho, has said that Kim Jong Il was operated on by foreign doctors after his stroke and that he is slowly recovering while remaining in charge of the country.

North Korea has derided such reports as troublemaking propaganda, insisting all along that Kim is just fine. Its release of undated photos of Kim is apparently intended to provide visual confirmation of his excellent health.

The first batch of Kim-is-fine photos was released Oct. 11, but they flunked the seasonal leaf test. They showed Kim inspecting a military unit near trees whose foliage looked suspiciously summery.

The photos released Sunday featured authentic autumnal colors, but newspapers in Seoul have remained dubious, seeking input from photo experts and neurosurgeons.

The JoongAng Daily noted that none of the photos showed Kim, the soccer game or the crowd together in the same frame. The paper said this raised "suspicions that Kim might have been photographed separately from the game."

The Chosun Ilbo, South Korea's largest newspaper and the one that broke news of Kim's reported stroke, said that in the new photographs, Kim's left arm "seems weak" and "he has fewer wrinkles on the left-hand side of his mouth than on the right."

If the pictures are genuine, experts cited by the paper said, they suggest that Kim "can walk with a cane" and that "the stroke occurred in the right side of his brain, leaving him able to speak and make decisions."

Last week, Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso told a parliamentary committee that he had received intelligence reports that Kim was in a hospital, in poor health but still able to make decisions.