N. Korea slams Kim Jong-Un plastic surgery reports

SOUTH KOREA: North Korea has finally responded to persistent rumours that leader Kim Jong-Un had plastic surgery to look like his revered grandfather, issuing an angry denial criticising “sordid” media reports.

Speculation that Kim's resemblance to the country's founding leader, Kim Il-Sung, is not 100 percent natural has been around for some time, though with little or no supporting evidence.

The rumours have been partly fed by the undeniable fact that Kim Jong-Un has sought to evoke memories of his grandfather in numerous ways, through his dress, haircut, gestures and public appearances.

And there is a clear physical resemblance. But Pyongyang's patience with reports of plastic surgery appears to have run out.

“The false report... released by enemies is a hideous criminal act which the party, state, army and people can never tolerate,” the official Korean Central News Agency (KCNA) said in a commentary Wednesday. Insisting that the very idea of Kim, who is in his late 20s, undergoing plastic surgery was “unimaginable,” KCNA flatly rejected what it described as “sordid hackwork by rubbish media.”

AFP