Of course it remains a form of fat shaming: saying that someone has lost such impressive weight. This implies that the person in question once looked less slim and healthy – say fat. And who the hell am I to judge that? However, we make an exception for Kim Jung-un, the undisputed leader of the communist dictatorship of North Korea, nicknamed the Brilliant Comrade. Someone who (among other things) has his half-brother poisoned with nerve gas, has his uncle executed with anti-aircraft fire and an unwelcome minister pulverized by a missile, must be able to take a beating.
So about his appearance.
Just a few years ago, Kim Jung-un (38) was on the more than chunky side. In films he was sometimes seen toddling, the obese body struggling with difficulty and uncertainly directing in the direction he had chosen. In June 2019, he met US President Donald Trump at the demarcation line between North and South Korea. In addition to his overall corpulent size, the footage of the encounter then stood out for his lower skull—the rear-facing response to his double chin—bulging above his ears.
Kim, also known as the Great Leader, has lost spectacular weight since then.
Broken heart
It was in June 2021 that North Korea’s state news agency implicitly itself acknowledged for the first time that Kim had gone through weight loss. It quoted, exceptionally, a concerned citizen from the capital Pyongyang saying that his “heart was broken” at the sight of the “starved” leader. A rather exaggerated characterization, fitting in the culture of grandiose hyperboles in which state television also deals with political leadership.
It was not clear whether Kim’s shrunk body size was the result of the dictator’s extremely hard selfless work for his beloved, starving people (as in a North Korean ‘documentary‘ has been suggested), or by diet. That might have been recommended by personal physicians to spare Kim the fate of both his father and grandfather – suddenly dead from a heart attack.
Since the summer of last year, Kim has only gotten slimmer. On January 19, he was photographed attending a meeting of the Workers’ Party Central Committee in Pyongyang. The double chin has now all but disappeared, the jawlines are more pronounced, the frowns on his forehead, which in earlier years were obscured by the ample presence of fat, are visible. The cartoonists (not North Korean) who took delight in portraying him as a floppy baby or toddler will have to find new inspiration. Even his special coiffure – covered top, shaven halfway up the skalp – looks more common than ever.
Food shortages
Perhaps Kim Jong-un’s new look fits his aspiration to, ten years after he inherited supreme power from his father Kim Jong-il, really put an end to the food shortages that the people have been experiencing since the outbreak of the pandemic. has struggles. on his January 1 new year’s speech he announced that he would solve the food problem ‘completely’. It undoubtedly helps if the supreme leader shows himself fit and apparently manages to resist the temptation of the abundant food and drink available at the top of the party: a monument of discipline.
In any case, the photo of January 19 is one of the very rare ones from the completely introverted country, where the outside world hardly needs to have any doubts about its veracity. Unless the state media has photo shoppers who have given him an extreme digital makeover. Which I doubt, if only because doing so would cut off the regime’s stride when it comes to broadcasting moving TV pictures. The size of Kim in the photo and Kim in motion on TV must match as he receives acclaim or watches the launch of another hypersonic rocket with approval.
One possible cause for Kim’s new stature has not yet been identified: his weight loss is caused by a serious illness. He wouldn’t be the first to receive compliments for his approach to an alleged beauty ideal when it turns out to be just an intermediate stage on the way to the inevitable end. Time will tell.