North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is in firm control of his government but has hurt his leg, a source with access to the secretive North's leadership said on Thursday, playing down speculation over the 31-year-old's health and grip on power.
North Korea's state media, which usually chronicles Kim's whereabouts in great detail, has not made any mention of his activities since he attended a concert with his wife on Sept. 3.
The source said that Kim hurt his leg while inspecting military exercises.
"He ordered all the generals to take part in drills and he took part too. They were crawling and running and rolling around, and he pulled a tendon," the source told Reuters on condition of anonymity.
"He injured his ankle and knee around late August or early September while drilling because he is overweight. He limped around in the beginning but the injury worsened," the source said.
Kim, who has rapidly gained weight since coming to power after his father died of a heart attack in 2011, had been seen walking with a limp since an event with key officials in July, which would imply he may have aggravated an earlier injury.
Kim needs about 100 days to recuperate, said the source, whose information could not be independently verified.
"Kim Jong Un is in total control," said the source, who has close ties to Pyongyang and Beijing.
Friday is the 69th anniversary of the founding of North Korea's Workers' Party, an event Kim has marked in the past two years with a post-midnight visit to the Pyongyang mausoleum where the bodies of his father and grandfather are interred.
If Kim does not turn up, it could fuel speculation over the state of his health and whether he may have been sidelined in a power struggle, experts said.
"The longer he remains out of the public eye, the more uncertainty about him, and the status of his regime, will grow," said Curtis Melvin, a researcher at the U.S.-Korea Institute at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies in Washington.
Not Kim's first absence
North Korean officials have denied that Kim's public absence since early September is health-related and a U.S. official following North Korea said this week there were no indications he was seriously ill or in political trouble.
It remains unclear why a leg injury would keep Kim out of the public eye for so long, although this is not the first time he has been missing from public view.
In June 2012, six months after coming to power, state media failed to report on or photograph him for 23 days.
He re-surfaced the next month at a dolphinarium.
North Korea is a hereditary dictatorship centred on the ruling Kim family. Kim's sister, Kim Yo Jong, is known to have an official role within the ruling party. His brother, Kim Jong Chol, and his estranged half-brother are not in the public eye.
Kim was absent from a Sept. 25 meeting of the Supreme People's Assembly, or parliament, the first he has not attended since coming to power three years ago.
However, Kim's name has not disappeared from state propaganda.
Thursday's edition of the Workers' Party newspaper, the Rodong Sinmun, carried three letters to Kim from overseas allies on its front page, and has reported on returning athletes from the Asian Games who thanked "the Marshal" for his support during the competition.
Abrahamian said it was unlikely Kim had been usurped.
"Kim Jong Un has always shared power with other key figures and even if the internal balance of power has shifted, it is unlikely that they would want to remove him, given his unmatchable symbolic value. Again, though, everyone is guessing," he said.
New star emerges
The man in the olive drab uniform and oversized Soviet-style military cap who strode through South Korea's main airport last week has climbed from an obscure desk job in North Korea to the most powerful position outside the ruling Kim family.
Hwang Pyong So, now a top military aide to Kim, has had an unprecedented rise to the top rungs of North Korea's leadership in the space of a few years. With intense speculation on the whereabouts of Kim, Hwang is even more in focus.
Last week, Hwang was at the head of a delegation that visited South Korea for the closing ceremony of the Asian Games in the city of Incheon with little advance notice.
He is the most senior official from the North to have ever come to the South, and opinion is divided on whether this could be a sign of turmoil in Pyongyang.
Hwang, who is 64 or 65, was in the Organization and Guidance Department (OGD), a powerful and secretive body that finalizes appointments within North Korea's leadership, and rose to be its second-in-command, according to North Korea experts and South Korea's Unification Ministry.
At the time, the OGD was headed by Kim Jong Il, the father of the current leader.
Hwang was associated with Kim Jong Un in the late 2000s when the young man was first named in state media reports announcing his party and military credentials.
When Kim Jong Un took power after his father's death in 2011, Hwang was among his coterie of advisers. As others fell by the wayside, Hwang became chief of the General Political Bureau of the army, a powerful position that mobilizes the military for the leader, earlier this year.
Last month, he also became vice chairman of the National Defense Commission, considered one of the most important posts in North Korea. Kim Jong Un is chairman.
Jang Jin-sung, a North Korean defector who previously worked at a propaganda unit in the North's ruling party, said it was unusual for an OGD veteran to rise to such a prominent position.
"These are the people who come to the forefront only when there is a purge or an execution," said Jang.
Pyongyang's military leadership has been in a state of perpetual reshuffle since Kim Jong Un took power.
Kim's uncle Jang Song Thaek, who was once seen as the No.2 in Pyongyang, was purged and executed late last year.
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Jang's replacement, Choe Ryong Hae, has been demoted several times since then. Now head of the state sports commission, a role Jang also held before being executed, Choe accompanied Hwang on the visit to South Korea.
A source with ties to the leadership in Pyongyang and Beijing said Choe fell from grace for not preparing troops in his role as political head of the North Korean army.
North Korean state media in April said Kim noted "serious defects" with an artillery unit within the army that he said failed to carry out "party political work" - a task within Choe's remit.
Kim Jong Un further lost confidence in Choe when he learned the 65-year-old had stashed millions of dollars in a secret Chinese bank account, the respected Seoul-based Daily NK website reported in July.
New uniform
Despite little military experience, Hwang wears a rank equivalent to a four-star general - not unusual in a top-heavy military leadership where party cadres often rotate in and out of uniform.
"Hwang was promoted because Kim Jong Un was impressed with his division, the most combat-ready of the ones Kim inspected," the source with ties to the leadership said.
Known as a close confidant of the young dictator, Hwang had few official dealings with people outside the reclusive North before leading the delegation to South Korea on Saturday.
He arrived on a VIP plane bearing the emblem of the North Korean state, flanked by suited bodyguards wearing sunglasses and earpieces.
During his 12-hour trip, Hwang smiled often, watched fireworks and Korean pop music at the closing ceremony, and at times spoke in a way that made it impossible to ascertain what he was saying, official transcripts show.
Michael Madden, an expert on the North Korean leadership, said people who have met Hwang described him as lacking arrogance, favoring consensus and "very pleasant to interact with." He cuts a more formidable figure at home.
At a military rally in Pyongyang in July, Hwang told troops to prepare for nuclear Armageddon against America.
"If the U.S. undermines our sovereignty and right to exist with its nuclear weapons and aircraft carriers, our army will launch a nuclear-armed rocket at the White House and major U.S. bases in and around the Pacific," Hwang said.
Hwang first emerged in state media reports 10 years ago as greeting leader Kim Jong Il with "stormy cheers" at a concert.
South Korea's Ministry of Unification has published little on Hwang beyond his job, rank and year of birth - 1949, the same generation as many of the cadres around Kim Jong Un. Kim's father, by comparison, was often accompanied by octogenarians.
Experts are divided as to how much control the OGD, and Hwang, have over Kim Jong Un, but there is general agreement that there has long been mutual dependency between party cadres and the Kim family.
"Hwang is the guy who made the leap from the shadows to sunshine," said Jang, the defector.
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