트럼프 "김정은 건강하게 돌아와 기쁘다"
North Korean leader Kim Jong-un has appeared in public for the first time in twenty days,... putting to rest rumors that he had been incapacitated, supposedly by heart surgery gone wrong.
U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted Saturday that he was glad to see Kim is back.
Our Kim Bo-kyoung tells us more.
On Saturday, local time,... President Trump retweeted pictures from North Korean state media showing Kim Jong-un attending a ceremony for the completion of a new fertilizer factory in Sunchon.
Trump said he is (quote) "glad to see him back and well."
Experts say that tweet likely means that Trump has seen intelligence confirming the photos' authenticity.
The day before,... before going to Camp David, the presidential retreat in Maryland, he had declined to comment on Kim's reappearance, saying he might have something about it to say at the appropriate time.
Still,... asked by reporters whether he would talk with Kim this weekend, Trump said that he "may."
Rumors of Kim's demise or incapacitation were put to rest by video footage released Saturday by the North's state-run Korean Central Television showing the 36-year-old at the ceremony for the new fertilizer factory.
Kim had not been seen in public for twenty days,... even on one of the regime's biggest holidays -- April 15th -- the birthday of Kim's grandfather and the founder of North Korea, Kim Il-sung.
Speculation about his health had been published in numerous unverified news reports saying that Kim was brain-dead or in grave danger after heart surgery... along with theories about who would be Kim's successor.
The New York Times said the rumors about Kim's unexplained absence show how little the world knows about what’s happening in the North,... and that his reappearance still does not explain nearly three-week absence.
Kim Bo-kyoung, Arirang News.