The Guardian reports that North Korea admits that its portly little god suffers.
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is suffering from “discomfort“, a state media report has said in the first official acknowledgement of ill-health after a prolonged period out of the public eye.
Kim, 31, who is frequently the centrepiece of the isolated country’s propaganda, has not been photographed by state media since appearing at a concert alongside his wife on 3 September, fuelling speculation he is suffering from bad health.
“Based on his gait, it appears he has gout – something [due to] diet and genetic predisposition that has affected other members of the Kim family,” said Michael Madden, an expert on the North Korean leadership and contributor to the 38 North website.
Kim had been seen walking with a limp since an event with key officials in July and in a pre-recorded documentary broadcast by state media on Thursday appeared to have difficulty walking.
“The wealth and prosperity of our socialism is thanks to the painstaking efforts of our marshal, who keeps lighting the path for the people, like the flicker of a flame, despite suffering discomfort,” a voiceover for the hour-long documentary said.
There’s nothing funny about gout. It can be excruciatingly painful, like a spike struck right through your foot. But since Kim has it, second look at gout?
Gout can be controlled, or at least managed, through medications and dietary changes. Kim is only 31, which is young for a serious gout sufferer. Gout has genetic connections, but Kim suffering from it at such a young age suggests his diet has a lot to do with it. Get the man a bowl of cherries, stat, and keep him away from the beer!
On second thought, if anyone deserves to have gout, it’s that toad. He’s holding an entire country under a form of house arrest, and thanks to decades of brainwashing, they love him for it. US foreign policy toward North Korea should consist of shipping Kim as much beer, red meat and crab legs as he can possibly consume.
Kim’s gout points to his personal excesses as he rules a country where starvation due to his and his family’s policies is the norm. The average North Korean is literally shorter and smaller than her cousins in the capitalist and robust South. Yet there’s dictator Kim, waddling across North Koreans’ TV screens, clearly suffering from a diet-related disease, while his subjects eat grass and/or grow thin in the many North Korean gulags.
Next, North Korean propaganda will come up with a divine explanation for Kim’s limp.
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