Korea: Doubles, toil and trouble in Pyongyang

By Donald Kirk 

SEOUL - The next time some big-time foreign visitor calls on Kim Jong-il in Pyongyang, he should 

probably bring some nasty little gizmo for checking DNA. And the people with him should be taking 

photographs and voiceprints with tiny thumb-nail-sized cameras and recorders tucked away in their 

coat lapels and tie clips. 

Probably nothing short of the most sophisticated equipment imaginable is going to settle the issue 

for sure. Somehow the world has got to know, is this guy Kim Jong-il or is he not Kim 

Jong-il? Until then, the debate is sure to rage with the ultimate question unanswered, "Is God dead?" 

God, that is, in the person of the Dear Leader, Kim Jong-il, who together with his father, the Great Leader, 

assumes god-like stature in North Korea in a holy trinity that would also include theDear Leader's sainted 

mother, Kim Jung-sook. 

No self-respecting Korean expert wants to seem too far out on the subject, but then again how else will 

anyone really be able to disprove the claims of the Japanese journalist and academician, Toshimitsu Shigemura.

He's been writing for years that Kim Jong-il cannot accurately be described as on his last legs. He's bed-ridden, 

unable to walk at all, Shigemura insisted yet again in a conversation with me this week - that is, if he's not 

already history. 

Shigemura's thesis about a Kim Jong-il look-alike, or two or three look-alikes, goes back to the 1990s when

he swears a Japanese magician, Princess Tenko, entertained the Dear Leader on secret trips to Tokyo at a 

swanky nightclub in the city's Akasaka district and then was twice invited to see him in Pyongyang. 

"Kim Jong-il appeared on a wheelchair," Shigemura said in a recent lecture in Portland, Oregon. The attentive 

magician asked a son and daughter of the Dear Leader - it's not clear which ones - to call her when he appeared 

near death, as Shigemura told the story. "They called her cellular phone at the beginning of 2003." 

Shigemura, a correspondent for 30 years with the Japanesenewspaper Mainichi Shimbun and now a professor of 

international relations at Waseda University in Tokyo, is undeterred by suggestions that perhaps the story is a 

little outdated. 

Has Kim Jong-il not proven his existence by hosting former US president Bill Clinton for more than three hours 

in early August? And what about his subsequent meetings with the chairwoman of Hyundai Asan, the company 

responsible for developing the Kaesong Industrial Complex and the Kumkang tourist zone? Most convincingly, 

could anyone doubt his authenticity after those sessions with China's Premier Wen Jiabao in early October? 

Shigemura laughs politely at the notion that anyone should seriously take what he clearly views as scams at

 face value. "The Kim Jong-il who saw President Clinton is totally different," he observed, from the sickly looking 

one who appeared before the Supreme People's Assembly after North Korea had test-fired a long-range 

Taepodong-2 missile in early April. "He looked very healthy." 

A skilled actor, Shigemura believes, could easily have rehearsed what to say and gotten off all the right lines 

for the benefit of Clinton and the aides and advisers who accompanied him. But could Hyun and Wen, both 

of whom had met him before, be so easily fooled? Certainly, said Shigemura, especially since the Kim Jong-il 

they had met previously may well have been the same actor. 

Intriguing though Shigemura's theories may sound, they're less than convincing to most observers. There 

seems to be little question, however, that Kim Jong-il does have a double, or maybe a few of them, to cover 

for him on all those trips he makes to farms and factories, army bases and art exhibits. How else could one 

man, an ailing one at that, really have gone on more than 120 such excursions reported so far this year? 

Kim Jong-il started going on all those trips several months after he reportedly had suffered a stroke in August

 2008, as reported by Pyongyang's Korean Central News Agency. The real question everyone was asking 

initially was whether North Korean photo editors doctored the photographs, showing earlier pictures of Kim 

Jong-il, or whether he had a double sitting in for him. 

Shigemura believes careful study of the photographs leaves no doubt of a double. The fact that dictators 

everywhere seem to like to doubles as protection against assassination attempts lends weight to this view. 

"These dictators always need look-alikes for security reasons," said Choi Jin-wook, senior North Korean 

specialist at the Korea Institute of National Unification. In any case, he observed, "Kim Jong-il has been d

oing on-the-spot guidance too often for his health." 

Kim Tae-woo at the Korea Institute for Defense Analyses takes a measured view. "There have been such

 rumors," he said. "We don't know whether this is real or fake." As an obvious precedent, however, he 

cited the example of the late Iraqi president, Saddam Hussein, who often sent a double for appearances 

around Baghdad before the US invasion in 2003. 

North Korean defectors have been spreading stories of late that seem to support the view that Kim Jong-il 

indeed has a double on travels around the country. "A North Korean defector was talking to me about the 

same thing," said Ha Tae-kyung, whose Open Radio for North Korea broadcasts short-wave news and 

views for two hours a day into the North. "He said he knows a girl whose father is the actor for Kim Jong-il." 

A whole cast of actors may have had to be trained to play the role, though, considering the changes in 

the Dear Leader's appearance. "One of the refugees said she has heard of many look-alikes," said Kim 

Bum-soo, editor of a political weekly here. "He must have. Why not?" 

When the Dear Leader showed up live on video at the Supreme People's Assembly in April, he was no 

longer the pudgy fellow that he had been before his stroke eight months earlier. If Shigemura's hypothesis

 is correct, an actor would have had to rehearse diligently to portray him as he slowly recovered to the 

point at which he could meet and greet Clinton and Wen. 

"Recently Kim Jong-il is losing his hair," said Ha Tae-kyung. "He's very skinny these days. Most of the 

pictures put out by NorthKorean authorities are not the real Kim Jong-il." 

The sense among analysts is that Kim Jong-il has to be preoccupied with arranging his succession. His

 third son, Kim Jong-un, still seems to be the front-runner, even though he's not getting a lot of publicity 

these days. 

As long as the father survives, his brother-in-law, Jang Song-taek, seems to wield the most power.

 Whenever the Dear Leader passes away, two or three top generals are likely to want to grab real power 

behind the figurehead of the son. 

All of which lends credibility to the view that Kim Jong-il does have doubles - but that he can speak and 

act for himself when it comes to dealing with his own underlings as well as foreign visitors. 

The next chance for close-up scrutiny may come if he accepts an invitation from China's President Hu

 Jintao to go to Beijing. It may be unimaginable for a double to replace him on such a journey, but the 

trip should provide a chance to pick up some DNA evidence. 

That's just in case a few drops of sweat and saliva are needed to determine who's really who as Kim 

Jong-il clings to life while transferring power to his son and hanging on until what may be his last big 

blast, ceremonies in 2012 marking the 100th anniversaryof the birth of his father. 

Journalist Donald Kirk has been covering Korea - and the confrontation of forces in Northeast Asia - 

for more than 30 years.

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