North Korean leader Kim Jong Un has been in a coma for months and all his new general public appearances had been faked, a South Korean official says in a new report about the reclusive despot.

Chang Music-min, a previous aide to late-South Korean president Kim Dae-jung, alleged that Kim has turn out to be significantly ill amid speculation about his constrained public appearances this calendar year.

In April, rumors circulated that the Hermit Kingdom honcho was in a vegetative point out just after a botched coronary heart procedure.

The former aide now claims Kim fell into a coma months back and that his subsequent appearances were being recorded earlier, in accordance to the UK’s Sun.

“I evaluate him to be in a coma, but his daily life has not ended,” he told South Korean media, introducing that the leader’s younger sister, Kim Yo Jong, was poised to assistance direct the country.

“A comprehensive succession framework has not been fashioned, so Kim Yo-jong is staying introduced to the fore as the vacuum are not able to be managed for a prolonged time period,” he said.

In a shut-doorway meeting with lawmakers final 7 days, the Countrywide Intelligence Provider mentioned the electric power shift partly seeks to “relieve (Kim’s) pressure from his reign and avert culpability in the occasion of plan failure,” the Yonhap News Company noted.

Images emerged Thursday demonstrating Kim attending a government conference, although Reuters described that it could not “independently verify” the photographs.

The Every day NK, a South Korea-based news outlet about the North, noted that resources in the rogue routine have claimed that Kim’s sister is seeking to secure her posture in Pyongyang by having on the South.

“She cannot rule the country from the army like her brother, so she is expanding her authority as a result of the Propaganda and Agitation Department, just like her father Kim Jong-il,” a source said, The Solar reported.