Nothing ‘wrong’ with leader Kim Jong’s health

There is nothing wrong with the health of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, a senior North Korean official said during an extremely rare visit to the South, after rumours of a debilitating illness or even a coup in Pyongyang.

South Korea’s unification minister Ryoo Kihl-Jae, speaking on a television talk show Sunday, quoted Kim Yang-Gon as saying: ‘There is nothing wrong with the health of Secretary Kim’.

Kim Yang-Gon, who heads a ruling party department in charge of South Korea-related affairs, visited the South’s western port of Incheon to attend the closing ceremony of the Asian Games, along with two other high-ranking officials.The delegation, led by Pyongyang’s second most powerful man, Hwang Pyong-So, flew back to Pyongyang late Saturday after a series of meetings with Ryoo and other South Korean officials.The minister said Hwang had asked him to deliver a ‘heartfelt greeting’ from Kim Jong-un to South Korean President Park Geun-Hye, but there was no specific message from the leader.The North’s leader has not been seen in public for a month, fuelling rumours about his health and even triggering reports of a coup.