North Korean leader Kim Jong-un “completely withered away” in 2021, a new state TV documentary has claimed.
The documentary, entitled '2021, A Great Victorious Year' was released by Korean Central TV (KCTV), which typically releases a film reviewing the previous year, focusing on the dictator and praising him.
This one though seemed to try to address Kim’s sudden weight loss and even showed him struggling to walk down a set of stairs.
Framing it as a positive, the documentary declared that the sudden weight loss was because of all the hard work the tyrant had done for his country.
The narrator says: “[Kim Jong Un] showed us his fatherly side by doggedly braving snow, rain and wind while taking on the fate of the nation and people like his own children.
“His body completely withered away, and he showed his motherly side by greatly suffering and worrying to realise the dreams of the people.”
The state media also airs a citizen’s remarks that the dictator looked “emaciated”.
As the narrator says this, the documentary shows Kim holding an umbrella, whilst slowly descending the stairs, one step at a time.
The stairs scene appears similar to one from a documentary of his 2014 activities, when he vanished from his longest-ever break from the public.
At the time the narrator said he was not “feeling well”.
This year’s programme repeatedly emphasises that North Korea faces its “worst-ever hardships” and “challenges” in 2021.
This was in reference to the Covid pandemic, and it spoke a bit more about the national “food crisis”.
The country’s food crisis has been a controversial issue internally as it has been subject to much censorship and did not originally appear in any initial print media reports on the June party assembly.
According to the film’s narrator, Kim presented “important policy ideas in order to urgently stabilise the people’s lives and the tense food distribution situation and overcome the current food crisis with an emergency policy.”
As well as talking, briefly, about the dictator’s health problems, the KCTV documentary shows shots of the dictator riding around on horseback, and looking contemplative at what is thought to be one of his many mansions.
Elsewhere in the film, it showed the first ever look at the completed new 80-story skyscraper in North Korea, as well as a number of other major construction projects.
KCTV is expected to repeatedly broadcast the documentary over the coming days and weeks.
