Kim 'appears in public at New Year celebration'
North Koreans welcomed leader Kim Jong Il at a concert to usher in the Lunar New Year days after he hosted a foreign dignitary despite rumours about his health.
Mr Kim, who South Korean and US officials say suffered a stroke in August, met with Chinese envoy Wang Jiarui last week in what is believed to be the leader’s first face-to-face contact with a foreign official since he disappeared from public view last year.
Mr Kim celebrated the new year by attending a choral concert along with other top North Korean officials, the official Korean Central News Agency reported today in a dispatch monitored in Seoul.
“When he appeared in the auditorium the audience broke into the stormy cheers of ’Hurrah!’ and extended the warmest lunar New Year greetings to him,” KCNA said.
Mr Kim waved to the performers and audience when the performance was over. The report did not say when the concert took place; Yesterday was the first day of the new lunar year.
The public appearance is the latest indication Mr Kim, who turns 67 next month, has regained his health and remains in control of the Stalinist nation of 23 million.
Mr Kim’s health is of keen interest because the authoritarian leader – who inherited power from his father, North Korea founder Kim Il Sung, in 1994 – has not publicly named a successor. He wields absolute authority over the impoverished, nuclear-armed nation.
