Back from the dead: when South Korean partisan politics hurts North Korea policy | NK News
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October 05, 2026Oct 05, 2026

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Back from the dead: when South Korean partisan politics hurts North Korea policy

A recent gaffe by a freshman lawmaker highlights how detached from reality the country's conservatives have become

Views expressed in Opinion articles are exclusively the authors’ own and do not represent those of NK News.

On April 30, amid a storm of international speculation about North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s health, the recently-elected South Korean lawmaker Ji Seong-ho announced that there was a 99% chance that Kim was dead.

On May 2, Kim Jong Un, alive and well, appeared in public, proving Mr. Ji wrong. He has since apologised.

Ji is not your average lawmaker, of course. He is one of two representatives in the current National Assembly who was born in North Korea.