N. Korean leader caught dozing off during assembly session

Although North Korea’s supreme leader Kim Jong Un solidified his one-man rule through the seventh congress of the ruling Workers' Party and the Supreme People’s Assembly meeting, he apparently was not able to control drowsiness.

He was caught dozing during a session of the Supreme People's Assembly, the North’s rubber-stamp parliament, on Wednesday. In a recorded relay of the session, summarized into a 25-minute program and aired on Pyongyang’s state-run Korean Central Television at around 10:17 p.m., a camera filming the event caught him sitting still for about five seconds with his eyes closed. He appeared to be dozing off, rather than contemplating. The camera quickly turned to the audience, but the footage seems to have mistakenly been edited into the recorded broadcast.

The scene attracts attention because he got angry at officials dozing at meetings he attended and even purged some. South Korea’s National Intelligence Service reported in April last year that Kim had complained that Hong Yong Chol, then the North’s defense minister, took a nap at a military meeting the leader chaired, before subjecting the official to a public execution for disobedience and negligence.

Another source who attended a military rally in Pyongyang on October 23, 2013 said that Kim called some 10 senior military officers to the rostrum and tore their star insignias off before having them arrested. The source added that since then, senior military officers have gone as far as to take pills containing methamphetamine in order to stay awake during meetings with the leader.

Reportedly, an increasing number of North Koreans complain about the state-led anti-smoking campaign, as Kim Jong Un himself is a chain smoker.

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