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North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un visits a unit of the Korean People's Army in an undisclosed location in this undated recent picture released by the country's official news service in Pyongyang on Wednesday.
Before reading this, consider the source, and the subject. The source is the Chinese twitter-like micro blog service Weibo, being cited by the U.S. website Gawker, and the subject is a dictator from notoriously secretive North Korea who has hardly ever been seen outside his country and about whom very little is known.
According to the Gawker report, Weibo has "exploded" with rumors that newly anointed head of state Kim Jong Un was assassinated at the North Korean embassy in Beijing:
"Here's one version of the rumor, cleaned up from the crappy Google translation:
According to reliable sources, North Korean leader [Kim Jong-Un was killed] in Beijing in February 10 2012, at 2 o'clock and 45 minutes. Unknown persons broke into his residence shot and were subsequently shot and killed by the bodyguard."
Kim — believed to be 26 or 27 — formally succeeded his father Kim Jong-Il in late 2011 as the leader of the hermit-like totalitarian state. The succession — and whether the young Kim has the wherewithall to maintain power over the military and potential political rivals — has been the source of intense speculation.
Beijing is one of the few formal allies of Pyongyang, a relationship arising from their communist roots. The Chinese capital is the primary "listening post" for those seeking information on North Korea because information sometimes leaks out of China-North Korea discussions.
The genesis of the assassination rumor, according to Gawker, may have been a large number of vehicles parked at the North Korean embassy in Beijing.
But it quotes ChinaSMACK staff writer Joe Xu who says this is just more of the same: "Rumors like this pop up every other week," he writes on Twitter.
And a senior U.S. official asked about the reports told NBC News that the information runs toward "the false end of the spectrum."
Then again, China is frequently also the source of credible information on North Korea — with news from refugees who have made their way into the country, from Chinese who do business there, and from people who have sighted the private train of the Kim family passing through the countryside.
Msnbc.com will be following the story, however it unfolds.
NBC News Senior Investigative Producer Robert Windrem contributed to this report.
More from msnbc.com and NBC News:
Leave a Comment:
It was just a typo. They've actually just reanimated his father...it was supposed to read "Kim Jong Undead."
If it is rumor - don't report it.
Journalism 101 - report the facts after they have been verified as fact.
There is a difference between reporting a rumor as fact and reporting THAT THERE IS a rumor. The unusual or remarkable propagation of a rumor is in itself newsworthy under certain circumstances, such as in the context of complex china-NK relations. Even if the rumor turns out to be false, it might still have significant repercussions.