North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un may have been injured during missile tests, according to a former high-ranking official.
It has been claimed by multiple news outlets the controversial leader is desperately unwell or perhaps dead having undergone heart surgery.
Speculation erupted after Kim missed an annual birthday celebration for his late grandfather - Kim Il-sung, the country's founder - on April 15.
And now Lee Jeong Ho, a former official of Room 39, an organisation run by the Workers' Party of North Korea, has told news group Dong-A Ilbo Kim may have been hurt the previous day.
North Korea launched multiple short-range anti-ship cruise missiles into the sea and Sukhoi jets fired air-to-surface missiles on April 14 as part of its ongoing military exercises, South Korea’s military confirmed.
Lee, who has defected to the United States, said such tests would not have gone ahead without the order of the commander-in-chief, implying Kim was fit to do so when the missiles were launched at 7am.
He told the newspaper: “Kim was absent from the reports of the tests while no footage of the missile launch and the training of combat aircrafts was released, which points to a possibility of an unexpected accident that might have been caused by debris or fire."
The former official said footage of such tests would not be allowed to be broadcast without Kim's say so, further fuelling the suggestion the leader was injured.
Some officials or sources claim the dictator is dead, others say he is in a vegetative state or coma, but on Sunday it was said that he is "alive and well".
Lee believes the idea Kim, thought to be about 36, is brain dead after surgery is unlikely.
North Korea has never announced who would follow Kim in the event he is incapacitated, and with few details known about his young children, analysts say his sister Kim Yo Jong and loyalists could form a regency until a successor is old enough to take over.
Kim Yo Jong was promoted to the head of the propaganda department of the Workers' Party of Korea in October 2017.
Kim became leader when his father Kim Jong Il died in 2011 from a heart attack.
Each change at the top in North Korea has raised the prospect of a leadership vacuum or collapse of the Kim dynasty, which has ruled the country since its founding in 1948.
So far, each of the three Kims to rule North Korea has defied expectations, holding on to power with an iron grip.
But under Kim Jong-un, North Korea's arsenal of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles has grown substantially, raising concerns over who would control them.
