“I’m alive”: Kim Jong Un brushes off rumors that he is critically ill with a brain hemorrhage, appears in public with Kim Ju Ae

[Financial News] North Korean leader Kim Jong Un made a public appearance to demonstrate that he was in good health in response to foreign media reports that he had collapsed from a brain hemorrhage and been urgently taken to China.
On the 19th (local time), the US outlet the New York Post and the UK’s The Sun, among others, reported that Kim had fallen into a coma after suffering a severe brain hemorrhage and had been urgently transferred to Peking Union Medical College Hospital in Beijing for treatment. Media outlets in Ukraine and Türkiye also cited the reports.
Some media outlets predicted that if Kim became incapacitated, his younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, director of the Workers’ Party’s General Affairs Department, would temporarily take power before handing it over to his 13-year-old daughter, Kim Ju Ae.
Rumors that Kim had become incapacitated gained further traction after US President Donald Trump gave a different answer than before to a reporter’s question about a North Korea-US summit that same day.
At the White House that day, a reporter asked President Trump, “Do you think you could meet with the North Korean leader in China next month?” He replied, “I don’t know. I don’t know.”
However, the previous day, Kim released photos of himself visiting the light-industry clothing and footwear exhibition with his eldest daughter, Kim Ju Ae, and his wife, Ri Sol-ju, in a show of his good health.
The Korean Central News Agency reported that Kim toured the National Clothing and Shoes Exhibition-2026 with senior party and government officials the previous day and expressed satisfaction. The exhibition was held under the theme “A Fervor for New Product Development and Quality Improvement.”
The source of rumors that Kim had died was identified as Xie Wanjun, a dissident based in the United States who claims to be the head of the Chinese Democracy Party. On the 18th, he posted on X that specialists in cardiovascular and cerebrovascular medicine from Peking Union Medical College Hospital had been dispatched to North Korea on the 17th to save the critically ill Kim; that Kim was later moved to Beijing but ultimately died; and that his body was secretly returned to North Korea.

[email protected] Kim Kyung-soo Reporter