Analysts believe Kim look-alikes keeping up act

WILL the real Kim Jong-il please stand up?

A number of analysts here are convinced that not all the photos being released of North Korea’s leader, Kim Jong-il, are really photos of Kim Jong-il.

Instead, they say, a look-alike has been standing in for him on some of the 122 trips he’s reportedly made this year to the countryside, factories, cultural events, military units, and other venues.

Some observers say the North Korean leader is too ill to make all these appearances. The evidence of Kim stand-ins is far from verified, but several North Korean refugees here say that Kim has not one but several look-alikes playing his role.

Still, it’s logical that, for security reasons, Kim has one or more stand-ins, as did former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein before the US invasion in 2003. One argument is that Kim has no time for all those trips outside Pyongyang, while his health remains uncertain and he’s preparing his youngest son to take over as early as next year.

Ha Tae-young, president of Open Radio for North Korea, which broadcasts two hours a day via shortwave into North Korea, cites the word of one recent North Korean defector.

“He says he knows a girl whose father is the actor for Kim Jong-il,” says Ha. “Recently Kim Jong-il loses fat. He’s very skinny these days. The defector says, ‘If Kim Jong-il looks skinny, the actor can do the same thing.’”

In South Korea, there’s a booming business in Kim look-alikes. Dozens of people in recent years have portrayed Kim in television comedy shows, nightclub routines, and serious movies and dramas.

After the inter-Korean summit of June 2000, in which Kim received South Korean President Kim Dae-jung in Pyongyang, the South Korean government discouraged such satires for fear of upsetting reconciliation with the north.

Still, from time to time, South Koreans delight in appearing on TV flaunting the curly-haired bouffant hairstyle, platform shoes, and protruding stomach for which the Dear Leader was known before he disappeared from view for months after reportedly suffering a stroke in August 2008.

The wave of public appearances reported by the North Korean propaganda machine since then to show he’s in good health convinces some analysts that North Korean actors are portraying the Dear Leader too — but in dead seriousness.

“That’s possible,” says Choi Jin-wook, senior fellow and specialist on North Korea at the Korea Institute of National Unification. “These dictators always need look-alikes for security reasons. Kim Jong-il is giving ‘on-the-spot guidance’ too often for his health.”

Choi also says that North Korean photo editors are likely pasting in old pictures of Kim from previous times when he was in good health. No one here, however, is ready to go as far as Japanese writer Toshimitsu Shigemura, who has written two books and numerous articles claiming that Kim has been seriously ill for the past decade and may even have died.

Toshimitsu says that if the real Kim, looking wan and weak, appeared before the Supreme People’s Assembly several days after North Korea fired a long-range missile on April 5, then it must have been a look-alike who hosted former US President Bill Clinton in August.

“They were totally different people,” insists Toshimitsu.