Kim Jong-Il 'has cancer'
North Korea’s reclusive leader Kim Jong-Il has pancreatic cancer, it was reported today.
Seoul’s news channel network YTN television said Kim, 67, was diagnosed with the cancer around the time he was felled by a stroke last summer.
The report cited unidentified intelligence officials in South Korea and China.
Comments from South Korea’s spy agency were not immediately available.
Kim’s health is a focus of intense media speculation due to concerns about instability and a power struggle if he were to die without naming a successor.
His third and youngest son, Kim Jong Un, has widely been reported as being groomed as heir, but the regime has made no announcement to the outside world.
The report cited the officials saying the disease was "threatening'' Kim's life.
Pancreatic cancer is usually found in its final stage and considering Kim’s age, he is expected to live no more than five years, the report says.
South Korea’s spy agency said it could not confirm the report.
Today’s report came after Kim made a rare public appearance last week, in an annual memorial for his late father and North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung.
Television footage showed him markedly thinner and with less hair – only the second state event he has attended in person since the reported stroke.
He also limped slightly and the sides of his tight-lipped mouth looked imbalanced in what were believed to be the effects of a stroke.
The images touched off speculation that he could have other health problems.
South Korea’s spy agency has long suspected that Kim has diabetes and heart disease.
Doctor and professor Min Yang-ki of Seoul’s Hallym University Medical Centre said diabetes usually led to weight loss. The neurologist also said Kim’s limping appeared to be a result of a stroke.
But he said, overall it appeared Kim had recovered from that reported illness.
Kim walked on his own into a Pyongyang auditorium for last week’s memorial at a normal pace and bowed while standing during a moment of silence.
North Korea experts say the latest images of Kim show he is still fit enough to rule.
The totalitarian leader, whose rule is buttressed by an intense cult of personality, knew that the people of North Korea would pay great attention to the memorial, and his appearance there is a message that he is in charge, Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul’s University of North Korean Studies, said last week.
Kim Jong Il took over North Korea after his father died in 1994 of heart failure at 82, though he did not take on his father’s title of president. He runs the North from his post as chairman of the National Defence Commission.
In early April, he presided over a parliamentary meeting where he was re-elected as leader.
