Kim Jong Un keeps "dying" online, and North Korea keeps answering with photos

Kim Jong Un had not been seen in North Korean state media since 11 October 2026, when he toured a defence museum with his daughter. By 19 October, a claim was spreading online that he was dead.

A US-based Chinese dissident named Wanjun Xie posted that Kim had suffered a brain haemorrhage, been flown to Beijing, and died there. He gave no evidence. Within a day, North Korea's state news agency KCNA and the ruling party paper Rodong Sinmun published photos said to show Kim visiting a clothing and footwear exhibition in Pyongyang, smiling next to his wife Ri Sol Ju and his teenage daughter.

People online are asking the same question they asked twice before, in 2014 and in 2020. Is he actually alive, or is North Korea just showing us what it wants us to see?

Why do these rumours always start the same way?

Every major wave follows the same three moves, and this one is no different.

First, Kim disappears from state media for a stretch with no explanation. Second, a single unnamed source, a defector, or a foreign broadcaster says something dramatic, a coma, surgery, or death. Third, North Korea releases a photo that nobody outside the country can independently date or verify.

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Across the four biggest rumour waves since 2014, Kim Jong Un has gone unseen in state media for a combined 99 days, according to the dates North Korea's own outlets and independent trackers have reported. That is not a small gap. It is more than three months of a leader nobody can verify the whereabouts of, spread across four separate scares.

What actually happened the last three times this spread?

Here is every wave people have pointed to, in order, with what started it and what ended it.

Two of those photo releases came with a serious catch. The 2014 pictures were undated when first published, so nobody could confirm exactly when they were taken. Independent reporters still cannot verify the date on this month's exhibition photos either. North Korea says they are from 19 October. Nobody outside the country can check that.

Photo: Jan Engelhardt / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0

Why did the 2020 rumour spread so far before it fell apart?

The 2020 wave is the one people compare this to most, because it went further than any other before falling apart in public.

A South Korean lawmaker and former defector, Ji Seong-ho, said on the record he was "99% certain" Kim had died. Daily NK, a Seoul outlet that relies on sources inside North Korea, reported he had undergone heart surgery. Analysts at 38 North, a group that studies commercial satellite photos of North Korea, spotted a roughly 250 metre train parked at the private railway station that serves Kim's compound in the resort town of Wonsan.

38 North was careful about what that meant. The train could not confirm where Kim was or whether he was even on it. It only showed that a train matching his was sitting at a station reserved for the Kim family.

Eleven days later, Kim turned up smiling and smoking a cigarette at a fertiliser plant ceremony, shown live on state television. Ji Seong-ho later apologised for the claim. So did a second defector-turned-lawmaker, Thae Yong-ho, who had made similar remarks.

Could Kim Jong Un actually be in worse health than North Korea lets on?

Nobody can rule it out, and that is exactly what keeps the rumours alive every single time.

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South Korea's National Intelligence Service has told lawmakers that Kim's weight and heavy smoking put him at higher risk of heart and blood vessel disease. That is a real medical view from the country's own spy agency, not a wild claim from an anonymous account. It does not mean any specific rumour this month or in 2020 was true. It means the ground those rumours grow in is real.

Who would actually take over if the rumours were ever true?

This is the part that keeps people coming back to search for this every single time a new wave starts.

North Korea has been run by the Kim family for three generations, but nobody outside Pyongyang has been told who comes after Kim Jong Un. South Korea's intelligence agency believes he may be grooming his daughter, Kim Ju Ae, thought to be around 13 years old, as a future successor. She has already appeared beside him at military parades and high profile state events.

North Korea has never had a female leader, and she has no official title suggesting she is next in line. That uncertainty, more than any single photo or claim, is why BBC analysts point to succession as the real reason these rumours never fully go away.

So is this month's version true?

Nobody outside North Korea's inner circle can say for certain, and that has been true every single time since 2014.

What is certain is the pattern. Kim goes quiet. Someone claims something dramatic. A photo appears that answers nothing for sure. People believe what they want to believe, and the next gap in state media starts the whole thing over again. The next time Kim Jong Un disappears from view for more than a week or two, expect the same three steps to start running again, right on schedule.