If Kim Jong-Un were deceased, as current rumor has it, what would be next for Korea and the world?

I have no idea how a dictatorship such as that would establish their next leader, you can bet one thing their people will have zero say in it.

Chaos. Or…

The last thing China wants is a swarm of NK refugees coming across its border. My guess is they already have solid plans in place to move in if such an eventuality occurs. Maybe a puppet government to maintain a valuable buffer zone against South Korea.

I have been reading for years that he has been grooming a loyal cousin to follow in his footsteps. That is why he was having any good hearted relatives murdered over the years so they couldn’t upset his plan to keep it in the ruthless side of the family!!!

South Korean pop culture has been secretly influencing the youth of North Korea.
Due to the efforts of President Trump, a pressing majority of NK are ready to reunite the north and south.
President Moon Jae-in will choose a co-ruler to assist in reunification.
The celebrations will be epic.

Won’t be the Kim family-finally. His brother is not the type, and the kids that he supposedly has are too young.
It will be somebody China likes however. @Patty_Melt‘s optimism notwithstanding.

Hopefully, a more rational, anti-war individual would take over and try to promote peace, trade, and well-being with the world. (But that person would be overthrown and the same old shit would continue with somebody else.)

I have it on good authority (a good buddy of mine who is also a State Department official who is in position to know) that he is not dead. However, he could a) doesn’t know or b) be lying to me.

I just saw a joke on FB, Andy Borowitz has joke headlines, and it said “Trump tells a brain dead Kim Jong-Un that there’s no reason he can’t continue as President.” hahaha.

I have heard his sister will be taking over.

@chyna -I read that too.

Kim Jong Un’s train spotted at coastal resort, intel reports scotch death rumors

Article text pasted below for those who don’t have access to the Washington Post –
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TOKYO — Indications that North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is still alive and in the coastal resort of Wonsan are mounting, as satellite images showed his train apparently traveled there in the past few days, and U.S. and South Korean officials said they did not believe he had died.

Rumors of Kim’s possible demise have been swirling since he skipped celebrations for his grandfather’s birthday on April 15, and after a South Korea media report said he had undergone a cardiovascular procedure on April 12 in a hospital outside Pyongyang and was recuperating in a nearby villa.

But U.S. and South Korean intelligence services remain skeptical of reports that Kim is dead or gravely ill, according to three government officials familiar with the matter.

“We understand that Chairman Kim Jong Un has been in Wonsan this week,” said a South Korean official who requested anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence matters.

Another official said that Kim’s health is among the North’s most closely guarded secrets, but noted that neither government has evidence of his death.

Commercial satellite images published by the 38 North website, affiliated to the Stimson Center, showed what appeared to be Kim’s personal, 250-meter-long train at a railway station dedicated to the Kim family in Wonsan on April 21 and 23.

The train was not present on April 15.

“The train’s presence does not prove the whereabouts of the North Korean leader or indicate anything about his health, but it does lend weight to reports that Kim is staying at an elite area on the country’s eastern coast,” Martyn Williams, Peter Makowsky and Jenny Town wrote in their report.

To be sure, something strange is going down in the intensely secretive state.

Thae Yong Ho, a former senior North Korean diplomat who defected to the South in 2016, said in a statement it was “unprecedented” that Kim did not appear to lay a wreath at the Kumsusan Palace of Sun where his grandfather and father’s bodies are both embalmed.

But the fact that Kim has not been seen in public for two weeks is not in itself unusual — it falls within the “normal range” of absence for the North Korean leader, said Rachel Minyoung Lee, a former North Korea open source intelligence analyst for the U.S. government.

Indeed, Kim disappeared from public view for three weeks between a Lunar New Year concert on Jan. 25 and a February event at Kumsusan Palace of the Sun to mark his father’s birthday. He was not seen in public for another 13 days before offering “guidance” for military training on Feb. 28, according to state media reports.

“His absence from the Kumsusan Palace on Kim Il Sung’s birthday was unusual, but that alone is not evidence enough to say Kim Jong Un is in trouble,” Lee said.

She added that North Korea’s silence since then should not be over-interpreted. “North Korea does not react to rumors about the leader’s health,” she said.

The Daily NK website first reported that Kim had undergone an operation on April 12 at a hospital near Mount Myohyang and was recuperating at a nearby villa.

But if Kim were gravely ill, it’s unlikely he would have left the hospital and traveled by train to Wonsan, a distance of over 150 miles, if he were gravely ill. And if he had died, and officials wanted to maintain secrecy, it’s unlikely his body would have been transported across the country.

Speculation intensified last week when CNN reported an unnamed U.S. official had said Washington was monitoring intelligence suggesting Kim was in “grave danger” after surgery. But officials in Seoul and Washington soon downplayed or contradicted that report.

On Saturday, Reuters reported that China had dispatched a team including medical experts “to advise on” Kim. The news agency cited three unnamed sources, but cautioned that it was “unable to immediately determine what the trip by the Chinese team signaled in terms of Kim’s health.”

Kim is overweight and is frequently seen smoking: it would hardly be a surprise if he had heart problems. But the movement of the train and other indications he is in Wonsan, appear to contradict the notion he is at death’s door.

For experienced North Korea watchers, this territory is not unfamiliar. Kim’s father Kim Jong Il, and grandfather, Kim Il Song, were both subject to many false death reports. Kim Jong Un has gone into seclusion and missed important public events before, only to reemerge, noted Bruce Klingner, a former U.S. intelligence official who now works at the Heritage Foundation.

“On the other hand, the first that the U.S. Intelligence Community and even North Korean ministries knew of Kim Jong Il’s death in 2011 was the official announcement two days later,” Klingner noted.

When Kim Jong Il had a stroke in 2008, Thae said, colleagues at the Foreign Ministry knew nothing for an entire week, even as official documents that required the leader’s approval piled up.

But it’s also noteworthy that French doctors attended the North Korean leader on that occasion, analysts say, and it’s far from clear North Koreans would invite in Chinese officials and doctors — and possible Chinese meddling — if there really were a succession crisis being played out behind the scenes.

North Korea’s relationship with China is based more on overlapping interests than any real trust.

Indeed, analysts, officials and diplomats say concerns about the coronavirus represent another plausible theory to explain Kim’s vanishing act, especially if a senior official had contracted the virus or come into contact with someone who had.

The regime has repeatedly underlined its deep concern about a possible outbreak of coronavirus, and completely shut its borders early in the outbreak.

But many health analysts are skeptical, and Radio Free Asia reported that officials admitted the virus had spread through the country when talking with local organizations and neighborhood watch units.

The Tokyo Shimbun newspaper reported that Kim appears to be undergoing “voluntary isolation” in Wonsan, citing a high-ranking Japanese government official, and quoted North Korean sources as saying he had gone there after one of his bodyguards was found to have the virus. That’s not the sort of thing North Korea would admit publicly, especially given its insistence it has no cases of the virus.

There have been no new photographs of Kim on North Korea state media for two weeks, but that’s not necessarily a sign that anything is amiss.

“Experienced Korea watchers are counseling ‘we don’t know, we have to wait for confirmation, so have another drink,’” Klingner said, “while those new to North Korea are taking the rumors at face value and panicking about loss of control of nuclear weapons.”
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So yeah, probably not dead or dying, but just hiding from the plague.