North Korean head of state Kim Jong-un made headlines this month with the emergence of unconfirmed reports and rumors of his alleged death or health problems that might have befallen him.
And even though these speculations apparently had little substance to them, Kim's absence from the Day of the Sun celebrations, which honor Kim’s grandfather and DPRK founder Kim Il-sung, remains a mystery and sparked the aforementioned rumors in the first place.
Surgery Gone Wrong
While vice director of HKSTV Hong Kong Satellite Television claimed that Kim was dead, citing a "very solid source", a Japanese weekly called Shukan Gendai suggested that the North Korean leader ended up in a "vegetative state" after undergoing heart surgery earlier this month.
The latter theory was further elaborated via other unconfirmed reports "attributed to senior party sources in Beijing", which alleged that that "an operation to insert a stent went wrong because the surgeon’s hands were shaking so badly", according to the New York Post.
Viral Threat
Another theory states that, as a "source in China" allegedly told South Korean newspaper JoongAng Ilbo that Kim didn't attend the ceremony "because there was a problem within the Supreme Guard Command in charge of guarding North Korea’s top leader".
The source also claimed that there's been a coronavirus case among Kim's bodyguard team which might've put the North Korean leader himself at risk of being infected.
Things That Go Boom
One North Korean defector mused that Kim might've sustained injuries during the missile test held on 14 April which apparently couldn't go ahead without the latter's order.
As the defector postulated, since Kim was absent from the reports of the tests and there was no footage of the missile launch, it might be possible, however unlikely, that some kind of unexpected accident took place during that event.
