S. Korean Sources Claim Kim Jong Il Has “Serious Disorder” of the Pancreas (Updated, Bumped: Pancreatic Cancer?)

This report comes from “a South Korean intelligence official” to “a Japanese television network” to AFP, and contains no detail about the alleged condition, so the uncertainties about the accuracy of this should be obvious:

The TBS network reported that Kim has been resting and is being treated at his villa in the southeasten area of Wonsan by a team specialists.  The unidentified official told TBS Kim would be aware of the disorder which was made known to US and South Korean intelligence authorities in March.

Kim is believed to have been receiving treatment since he attended the first meeting of the country’s new parliament in April, the official was quoted as saying.  [….]   On Wednesday, a gaunt-looking Kim made a rare televised appearance as he paid homage to his late father Kim Il-Sung at a national memorial service. The film showed Kim’s hair was thinning and he had developed a slight limp.  [AFP]

At other blogs linking my previous postings on Kim Jong Il’s apparent decline (see recent photos here), some commenters have argued with each other about the appropriateness of wishing for Kim Jong Il’s death.  Those questions don’t plague me, and I’d reckon that in this, I’m secretly joined by thousands of North Koreans who must see such questions in stark and practical terms from which we’re thankfully spared.  To be sure, there will be chaos after Kim Jong Il dies, but that chaos is probably the only way that North Korea, a nation whose existence has been nightmarish for most of its subjects, will ever end.  Kim Jong Il is absolutely opposed to any reform or liberalization, and he seems determined to prepare his country to wreak apocalyptic destruction on other nations.  The longer he lives, the longer that preparation advances, and the longer North Korea continues to cull its people by the thousands and scar the souls and bodies of those who survive.  If Kim Jong Il lives for even two more years — or until the next South Korean election — he might manage to engineer a stable succession and develop a new survival strategy for the regime. The consequence of that would be the deaths of tens of thousands, and perhaps millions.

What’s more, I think that as a whole, those who know the true depravity of this regime would agree with me — if the death of one evil man can save lives, it’s not only appropriate to want that person dead, those with the means to do so are justified in assassinating that person if they can do so without causing more deaths than they would have by not acting.  If there were not broad general understanding of this concept, movies like “Valkyrie” would not have been made.

Update:

A source close to Kim’s extended family has said that the leader is in the last months of his life.

“He does not have all that much longer to live and my sources say the doctors’ diagnosis is that he will die before the end of the year,” Waseda University Professor Toshimitsu Shigemura told the Daily Telegraph. “He is still being treated for the main problem, which is complications arising from diabetes, and it had been expected that he could die as soon as this summer.”  [Fox News]

The rest of the article is junk speculation by people without any specialized understanding of North Korea.

Update 2, 13 July 09:   Again, there’s very little information about the source of this report:

North Korean leader Kim Jong Il has life-threatening pancreatic cancer, a news report said Monday, days after new images of him looking gaunt spurred speculation that his health might be worsening following a reported stroke last year.

The 67-year-old Kim was diagnosed with the cancer around the time he was felled by a stroke last summer, Seoul’s YTN television reported, citing unidentified intelligence officials in South Korea and China.  [AP]

The report cites doctors as saying that pancreatic cancer is usually caught late, and usually kills within five years of a diagnosis.  Web MD adds that among those suffering from it are Patrick Swayze, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and Steve Jobs — all alive, and all getting the very best care that money can buy, and all in very grave condition.  Early stage pancreatic cancer, the kind that’s very seldom detected, can be treated with surgery, but requires a lifelong regimen of enzymes and hormones, including insulin.  More advanced pancreatic cancer is very difficult for doctors to control, and is best treated with radiation and chemotherapy.  That would show obvious side effects, like much more advanced hair loss than we’ve seen in recent photos.  Oh, and some of medications used to treat it are narcotics.  Even so, Web MD reports that a “full cure” is “unlikely.”  What I wasn’t able to find out is how Kim Jong Il’s other medical conditions would affect his treatment.  Even so, if this report is true, and especially if he has diabetes as Kim Kwang Jin insists, it’s doubtful that he has five years.  Then again, a year ago, I’d have thought we’d all be rid of Fidel Castro by now.

The official propaganda apparatus is already spinning Kim Jong Il’s obvious decline.  A report, several weeks old, and which I’d been meaning to quote because of its enigmatic significance, tells us how.  KCNA is reporting that Kim Jong Il, instead of reclining in his seaside palaces under the care of foreign doctors, is working himself to death serving the masses:

Leader’s Forced March Full of Patriotic Devotion

Pyongyang, June 2 (KCNA) — The leader of the DPRK continues forced march full of patriotic devotion not for his personal comfort and the happiness of his family but for the prosperity of the motherland and all blessings of the people.

It was when General Secretary Kim Jong Il visited mines in Komdok area in South Hamgyong Province some days ago. He personally entered a pit of the Ryongyang Mine to acquaint himself with the work of putting the cutting on large-sized and modern basis and set forth the tasks to be carried out by the mine.

He has visited dozens of units to rouse the people to a leap forward since he kindled the torch of a new great revolutionary upsurge in Kangson in December last.  [KCNA, June 2, 2009]

The report goes on and on, listing the enterprises that His Withering Majesty had recently visited: the Wonsan Youth Power Station, the Taean Heavy Machine Complex, the Kum Song Tractor Plant, “various units” around Pyongyang, the Hungnam Fertilizer Complex, the Rakwon Machine Complex, and then an “800km-long journey of field guidance” to the Kim Chaek Iron and Steel Complex, the Ranam Coal Mining Machine Complex, the Musan Ore Mining Complex, all without so much as a day of rest!   Nor is this the end of the list.  Implied in the report is that with a bedraggled road system like North Korea’s, such journeys can take a lot out of an old tyrant.

It’s plausible that Kim made some of these visits, including some of the unit “inspection” visits near Pyongyang and the power station at Wonsan.  Most of the other accounts are probably fiction.

His forced march full of patriotic devotion is bringing about signal successes and creation of new norms and new records in all sectors of the national economy in the DPRK.

He went on his march day and night by train and field jeep, covering high passes, steep mountain ridges and earth and icy roads.

DPRK Forum has more; so does GI Korea.