Is Kim Jong Il dead? Yes, North Korea’s “Dear Leader” is no
more, having passed away in the fall of 2003, writes Waseda
University professor Toshimitsu Shigemura in Shukan Gendai (Aug
23-30).
A one-time Mainichi Shimbun journalist posted in Seoul,
Shigemura is introduced by the magazine as a leading authority on
the Korean Peninsula. His latest book, released this month, is
titled “The True Character of Kim Jong Il.”
If true, the implications are potentially vast. Among them:
former Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi’s summit partner during one
or both of his landmark visits to Pyongyang in 2002 and 2004 was
not Kim himself but a dummy—the stand-in Shigemura claims has been
fooling the world for at least five years.
A dictator having one or multiple doubles is a familiar notion
since Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was shown to have deployed them. But
Saddam was alive at the time. Kim, in Shigemura’s scenario, was not
manipulating a look-alike; he was replaced by one.
Of course it’s fantastic—but in North Korea, says Shigemura,
fantasy and reality are not mutually exclusive. “Japanese common
sense cannot take the measure of North Korea’s uniqueness,” he
writes. “For example: Kim came to Tokyo six times in the
1980s.”
Then as now, North Korea and Japan had no diplomatic ties. Kim,
then heir to the throne under his father, “Great Leader” Kim Il
Sung, apparently traveled incognito by ship. His purpose: to take
in the magic shows staged by magician Hikita Tenko at the upscale
Cordon Bleu show pub in Akasaka.
Shigemura cites as sources (without naming them) several people
close to Kim’s family. He hears from them that Kim’s diabetes took
a turn for the worse early in 2000. From then until his supposed
death three and a half years later he was confined to a
wheelchair.
Was the flurry of diplomatic activity in which the world saw Kim
engaged during those years mere sleight of hand? The “hermit
kingdom” seemed all of a sudden to grow remarkably outgoing. In
June 2000 Kim hosted the historic summit with South Korean
President Kim Dae Jung. The following month, he received
Russian President Vladimir Putin. In October his guest was U.S.
Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. In January 2001 he visited
China; in August, Russia. In September 2002 there occurred the
first summit with Koizumi, culminating in Kim’s admission, after
decades of denial from Pyongyang, that North Korean agents had
kidnapped Japanese nationals. August 2003 saw the launch of
the Six Party talks aimed at North Korea’s nuclear disarmament.
“Then suddenly,” writes Shigemura in Shukan Gendai, “the pace
slows.”
The second Kim-Koizumi summit, in 2004, lasted all of 90
minutes. Scheduled meetings with other foreign dignitaries were
abruptly canceled. Kim’s retreat from the public eye was almost
total. State television in October 2003 showed him touring a
collective farm, but mention of the date of the visit was
conspicuously absent.
Kim’s family, meanwhile, was in a state of upheaval. His wife
died—of breast cancer, said official reports; assassinated,
according to persistent rumors. His favorite sister, a high-ranking
Communist Party official, suddenly moved to Paris. Her husband lost
his post. Clearly something was afoot.
In the spring of 2006, says Shigemura, American spy satellites
succeeded in photographing Kim. An analysis of the photographs led
to an astonishing conclusion: Kim had grown 2.5 cm!
“Recently,” Shigemura proceeds, “someone who was in contact with
a Kim family member told me he heard the family member say,
‘There’s been a promise not to decide on Kim’s successor so long as
the current shogun is alive.’”
“‘Shogun’ was Kim’s nickname,” Shigemura explains “If Kim were
alive, the family member would simply have said, ‘the shogun’—not
‘the current shogun.’ The stress on ‘current’ seems to suggest that
the person in question is someone other than Kim Jong Il.”
Shukan Gendai asks a government official who helped plan
Koizumi’s Pyongyang visits what he thinks of all this. His reply:
“Rumors of a dummy Kim began circulating after the summit. Some of
us said we should have Kim’s voice prints analyzed. But if we did
that and proved the prime minister had been conferring with a
double, it could have destroyed the Koizumi administration. So we
didn’t proceed.”
http://www.japantoday.com/category/kuchikomi/view/north-koreas-kim-died-in-2
For your info, ALL satellites are not able to accurately
measures HEIGHT. 
