Are we seeing the real KJI at last?

"I am not the man you take me for": Kim Jong-il (or his double?) with fomer US President Bill Clinton. (Photo: KCNA)

Don Kirk has a brief dispatch in the Christian Science Monitor that questions whether former US President Bill Clinton actually met with Kim Jong-il or his body double.  I sincerely hope I am not wasting my time writing about General-Secretary Kim’s guidance tours if he is, in fact, using a body double for these appearances.  Several South Korean analysts are quoted in the article, but “far from verified” as Mr. Kirk writes.  Other than mindless speculation from Seoul-based DPRK experts, the only material evidence is a second-hand claim of a personal connection to the daughter of one of the body doubles.

Perhaps, the next dignitary who meets General-Secretary Kim can request his fingerprints or some other verifiable physical information–maybe a saliva swab tested against the DNA of an expat Kim relative.

Rumors of death and body-doubles have a precedent in the communist world: Leonid Brezhnev.  There were numerous rumors about Brezhnev’s demise in the 1970’s (see one story here) which turned out not to be false.