Sue Mi Terry, a former CIA North Korea analyst, said North Korean leader Kim Jong Un does not look healthy, based on footage of him meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.
“My first reaction looking at Kim Jong Un was, ‘Oof, he doesn’t look too great to me,’” Terry told CNN’s Kaitlan Collins on Tuesday. “There was a time when he lost a little weight and he looked better. So my initial reaction was that he didn’t look, in terms of being healthy, because his health is something that we always track anyway.”
Collins noted that because there’s limited trusted information coming from Pyongyang, sometimes on-screen appearances from Kim and other world leaders are the best guess at how they’re doing.
Terry’s comments follow a meeting between Putin and Kim, the first time the Russian president has been to North Korea in 24 years.
Putin and Kim announced a new partnership Wednesday, vowing mutual aid and protection. The details of the deal were not immediately clear, but Kim promised full support for Russia in its war with Ukraine, The Associated Press reported. Putin said the two nations would back each other against U.S.-led sanctions, in an op-ed published ahead of his visit Tuesday.
Kim said the two countries had a “fiery friendship” and described the deal as the “strongest ever treaty.”
Terry noted that Kim made a big deal about Putin’s arrival. The lights were on in the city and banners hung for his visit, and they pulled out the red carpet for the Kremlin.
She argued that North Korea did this because “it makes his country look like a normal country.”
“This is a big deal for him,” Terry said of Kim.
North Korea has vowed full support for Russia in its war with Ukraine. Pyongyang has supplied Russia with military equipment in exchange for economic assistance and technology transfers that would boost the country’s missile and space satellite sectors, the AP reported.
“I believe that Kim Jong Un is looking for something much more significant and that sensitive military technology to address his formidable weapons of mass destruction, his missile program,” Terry said.