North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, who hasn’t been seen since Sept. 3, gave a “field guidance” at a newly built housing complex, the official news agency of the secretive communist regime said.
The visit was believed to have been on Monday, according to the official South Korean news agency Yonhap. The report could not be independently confirmed.
There’s been rampant speculation about the 32-year-old Kim’s fate since he was last seen in public, with analysts suggesting he was in poor health or even the victim of a coup. Without much, if any, proof, observers speculated he had gout, or broken ankles from wearing Cuban heels or had even been executed.
The official story was unspecified personal “discomfort.”
Whatever the reason, Kim’s disappearance unsettled his neighbors and U.S. policymakers.
“There’s a mystery that surrounds Kim Jong-un, and we can’t account for it … and that’s all the more reason why we have to remain ready,” Gen. Vincent K. Brooks, the Army’s Pacific commander, said Monday on a visit to Washington.
